Well, before anyone can interact, I am turning up a new Gateway Notebook and among the Gateway "goodies" is "Big Fix", and while working to bring the new notebook up I got a message for a critical XP Home Security update, I took it. Yes, I purchased a new notebook and from old stock so I could avoid having to deal with Vista. That's another story, some of which is on recent posts about an Acer computer and trouble getting it to work with dial-up. I'll give a brief experience "grade" for Vista Basic and Acer soon, hope it has some value when done.

I'll try to answer several of your questions. Yes, you will need a special router, but I would NOT buy the one the salesman is pushing on you. I have one made by Cradlepoint (the CTR350) which I bought at Amazon.com and did not pay nearly that much for it. It is very small and I plug the wireless "card" (modem) into a USB port on the router. Then I connect my desktop computer via Ethernet (cat 5 cable). I connect my laptop via the wireless signal sent from the router. It is very easy to set up the security on the router. In addition, I also use software firewalls on my computers. The built-in wireless in the laptop is not the same thing as what you plug in. It allows the laptop to receive and use wireless signals, and all new laptops come with this. Now whether this would be faster than your DSL is questionable. Sometimes my service with Verizon is quite fast, but at busy times, mostly evenings, it slows down quite a bit. With DSL you have a dedicated line, so your speed should remain constant. I went this route, because I cannot get DSL or cable, and I suffered over 2 years with satellite. Then Verizon's 3-G (EVDO) became available to me. You need to be fairly close to a tower to get a good, strong signal also. If your cell phone service is good, chances are the wireless Internet would be good, also. I was able to buy a used "card", which is really a modem, so that I was not locked into a contract and I can end the service at any time without penalty. So it's your call. If you are unhappy with your DSL, you might give it a try. Do they have a trial period during which you can return anything and only owe for the usage you had? If not. . . . .It's your call.

I just went through 3 repairs with Acer. I sent it overnight and it still takes about 2 weeks. Each time they sent it back to me it was worse than before. The second time none of the keys worked on the keyboard. I finally gave up. It now freezes on me all the time. I've had it one year. I would not buy Acer again. Donna

Jean, 1-Make sure you defragment your hard drive. This is the #1 problem I find with slow computers. This will make it easy: download smart defrag. When you install it, be sure to uncheck on any screen extras it wants to install, and at the end of the installation check "give up my gift". Open Smart Defrag, click the automatically box to defragment your C drive. Tell it to Analyze the hard drive. You can then click the X in the corner and that will minimize it to the bottom right corner of your computer and you can ignore it. It will take a while the first time; after that it runs in the background when the computer is on and you aren't doing anything on it. http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/iobit_smartdefrag.html 2-Download and install CCleaner. It gets rid of tons of fragments that clog your computer. When it is installed, open it and click Analyze. The first time you use it it may take 15 minutes or more to run. It will want you to close your internet browser. When it is done searching, it will give to an option to delete all the junk. Do that.Run it every couple of months. Between these 2 programs you should see a big difference. There are other things that could be done, but I can't really explain them to you this way. http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/ccleaner_slim.html Brad