One knock that I read about Ubuntu is the poor wireless support for laptops/wireless Internet. I took this laptop (a Compaq Presario 2100) on a short family vacation in June and had no problems connecting to wireless networks all along the way. I will say that the procedure wasn’t as smooth as the wireless utility built into Windows XP (which I also like better than Vista’s utility). It did work, however.
Yesterday, as I was waiting for my daughter to finish with one of her activities, I stopped by a local coffee shop and could not get connected no matter what I tried. As per my tip last week on forums, when I got home last night I researched out wireless solutions in the Ubuntu forums. One tip helped a lot:
- RIGHT click on your network icon by the clock
- Click Manual Configuration
- Type in your system password (if necessary)
- Click your Wireless connection
- Click Properties
- Click Enable Roaming
- Click OK
- Click Close
I also knew that some enterprising soul somewhere had to have developed an add-on program to help in this whole process. I clicked Applications from my main panel (taskbar for windows users), then Add/Remove. I searched for wireless and found a program that had a respectable four star rating called WiFi Radar. I downloaded and installed it and today I’m using it and connected to the same coffee shop’s wireless that I wasn’t able to get going yesterday. 
Very slick, very easy.
Quick spam update: I have the spam filter working in Evolution, but I might have to switch to Thunderbird (which has a better out-of-the-box spam filter) because the filter has to “learn” what spam is, and isn’t learning very quickly and it is slowing me down from doing other things in Ubuntu. PLEASE, Cloudmark, port your wonderful product to Ubuntu and Evolution!!
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