[Ref]

Still no resolution to either of the bugs I have open regarding Amanda's laptop. This, coupled with the facts that (a) I found a CardBus slot on the side of the machine and (b) We're changing our ISP and getting a NetGear 108Mbps WiFi router in the process led me to purchase a pair of NetGear WG511T CardBus dongles. These are supported by the MadWiFi openSUSE packages and in conjunction with the new router will give us the full 108Mbps. They arrived today.

I plugged the first one into my notebook (I'd already installed the appropriate packages) and it was detected and showed up in nm-applet's menu - I can choose to connect using either it or the in-built adaptor.

Next, I plugged it into Amanda's machine. Or at least I tried. This is the point at which I ran into problems because (and obviously this is an issue with the machine, not with openSUSE or Linux before anyone flames me thinking I don't know this) it turns out the slot is not an extremely useful CardBus slot but a next-to-useless ExpressCard/54 slot.

So, I'm back to thinking about working USB adaptors. Some Googling around suggests that the 3Com 3CRUSB10075 ought to work out-of-the-box but I'm now feeling reluctant and aware that I'm building a collection of functioning (so I can't return them) wireless adaptors that make slightly geeky paperweights. Has anyone reading this on one of the Planets had experience of this particular dongle with Linux (preferably openSUSE)? Get in touch...