Update: 10 minutes later. I checked again and of course the PCI wireless card does fit in the slots in both of the PCs. Don't know what I was thinking when I decided that it didn't fit this morning. In my defence I'd just got up :). I'm leaving the (incorrect) contents of the post below as a lesson to myself.
As I work with computers, many of my friends and family see me as some kind of "computer expert". They are therefore often puzzled when I tell them that a) I don't do Windows and b) I do software and PC hardware confuses me. I've just proved point B again this weekend.
As previously mentioned, I'm in the process of moving to ADSL. Currently we're back on a standard 56Kb dialup account. My Apple Airport has a built-in modem and all the laptops with their wireless cards are talking to the internet very happily.
However, the phone point has now moved to the hallway where I can't get a network cable to connect up the main desktop machines. The cunning plan was to buy a wireless card for one of these machines and use that to connect the desktop network to the wireless network.
So I went off to PC World (yes, I know. mea culpa) yesterday morning and came back with a PC card with built-in wireless receiver. It all looks like it's going to be very easy.
The morning, I set to, opening up a PC to insert the card. The PC I was planning to use is the one that used to be my gateway to the internet. It's about five years old. On opening it up I find that the card doesn't fit. The card is labelled as a "PCI" card and my older PC seemd to have a different shaped set of card slots.
Undeterred I try the other (much newer) PC to find exactly the same problem. The card slots in the PC expect the cards to have one cutout from the connections, this card has two - and they neither of them are in the right place for my expansion slot.
I take a look at PC Hardware in a Nutshell but it's almost three years old and not much help (note to self - buy more recent edition). I guess I'll be spending the majority of the afternoon surfing the web trying to work out what type of slot I have and whether or not wireless cards are available in that format.
I'm sure it's just a huge conspiracy to force me into buying a new PC.
I, too, know virtually nothing about hardware. With so many of my friends knowing hardware, adminsitration and software development, I was beginning to feel I was behind the curve in many respects. Glad to hear that others that I respect are the same way (though you probably know more about administration than I do).
People who don't work with computers are often not aware that there's often quite a lot of specialization within the field. In my recent exploration of the joys of unemployment, the Oregon Unemployment Office tried to talk me into applying for a job administering Solaris boxes for just over half of my previous salary. Benefits could be cut off if I wouldn't apply for the job, but since they figured that "Solaris" == "computer", they assumed I knew it. Fortunately, I talked them out of that.
