Paul Lamar wrote:

Win modems won't work as far as I know.

snipped

Actually, your best bet is to use a good 10baseT Ethernet card and DSL

or cable

modem... :-)

I am sure Russell Kent can give you more and better advice.

Aw shucks...

Charlie,
Paul's right: switching to Linux isn't something to be done without

facing up to

the fact that you *will* spend alot of time getting things to work the

way you

want.  If you like tinkering with computer programs, finding out how they
*really* work, and all of the little bugs, err, "undocumented

features", then

have at it.  IF, however, you are a person who uses a computer as a

tool and have

neither the time nor the inclination to work on the *tool* (rather than

on the

*work*), then I'd have to recommend that you stay with Win2000, IRQ

warts and

all.

That said, I've found that the fewer cards you put in a WinDOZE box,

the fewer

problems you will likely have.

Gotta WinModem?  Use that sucker as clay pidgeon and get a good

external serial

(or USB) modem.

Gotta special scanner card?  It is likely a brain damaged SCSI

card.  See if you

can do without the scanner, or upgrade to a USB interface scanner.

Gotta special serial or USB interface card? Chuck that piece of crap

motherboard

and get a good motherboard that has those onboard.

Is this cheap?  Well, sometimes, if you've got all of the above and

more, its

cheaper to buy a new system (I got a new-in-box HP Pentium 4, 1.6GHz,

512MB,

40GB, CDRW, 17" monitor, WindowsXP for $1000 a month ago; prices are still
falling).

Russell Kent

Paul & Russell,
  Thanks for the advice. I do have a Winmodem as a backup for my DSL. My
scanner is a USB device. No SCSI or other oddball boards on my machine. Do
you consider a USB mouse better or worse than a PS2 mouse?  I recently
switched to a USB model in hopes of freeing up the IRQ used by the PS2 port.
  Am I more likely to have a problem using the one ISA port on my machine
for my sound card versus a PCI card?
Charlie

I let Russell answer that as I have never used a mouse with the USB port. I will
say a Logitech Optical mouse is the hot tip however. I use the
three button PS2/USB with the PS2 adaptor.

Paul Lamar
 
The AirCraft Rotary Engine NewsLetter.              Powered by Linux.
ACRE NL web site.
http://home.earthlink.net/~rotaryeng/            http://www.linux.org