On Sun, 2006-12-17 at 14:55 +0000, Adam Bower wrote:
O Also, are you sure that the laptop has a mini-pci slot that supports wireless? (you said pci, but i'm not aware of any laptop that has ever had a full size pci slot, unless it was specialised equipment) 5 year old machines didn't always have antennae available even if they had mini-pci slots in the first place and I'm not sure if Intel wireless cards are even supported on old chipsets although they are quite well supported in Ubuntu.
The intel mini-pci Wireless cards should work on just about any chipset that has the socket. However in Laptops that are not wireless aware as well as the lack of an antenna you sometimes have an additional problem with power management.
Modern wireless aware laptops have a switch for the wireless radio (sometimes this is a physical switch or sometimes it is a soft switch done with a key combination). Without this there is a chance that the Mini-PCI slot will not enable the radio. There are workarounds (involving tiny bits of insulating tape on the minipci edge connector) that I have performed before but to be honest if your minipci slot lacks the antenna wiring and the Wireless Switch then I'd go for the PCMCIA/Cardbus option.
I'd also second Adam's suggestion of hooking up your Laptop via a Ethernet cable if it is equipped with a Network socket. If you are new to Linux then this will be easier to get working initially. If fact assuming ubuntu has detected any built in Ethernet adaptor and DHCP is enabled on your Wireless Router (it is by default) then it should just work when it is plugged into your router.