Appreciate the offer. I might take you up on it again soon. I did try to do a little background research. The Edimax card (7128g) I had was listed as having a Linux driver. In fact I spent several hours looking into a number of things. I found a good site to guide me as well.
Ubuntu Linux Resources
I'm telling you the install went great, but the learning curve was prohibitive. I have such little free time these days with an 11 month old baby. For better or worse I know my way around the Windows environment.
As for those expenses you list, well... I can do just fine with Zone Alarm, AVG, the crappy old Windows defrag, and Ad Aware. Not much money spent there!
