excuse the dumbness but have you turned the wifi on .

Which OS do you have?

With XP, I had to open the network control panel and enable wireless, select the network I wanted to use, from the list of available, enter the WPA2 key and that was it.

With Vista and Windows 7, they just "oh, I've spotted a wireless network, do you want to connect?" and you just click on the relevant one.

If the machine was delivered with Windows pre-installed, then you shouldn't need to load any drivers, the wireless drivers should be installed and you just need to switch on wireless (if it is switched off - most laptops have a physical switch, to allow you to switch wireless off when you don't need it, or when you are somewhere where you can't use wireless, like a plane).

If the netbook didn't include the wireless drivers pre-installed, I'd just take it back. If they have failed to configure even the network card, who knows what other corners they've cut!

It sort of works, it says, "I've found a network, wanna join?" then you type in the password and it joins the network, but just sits there saying, "acquiring ip address" forever.

I gave up trying to get our Vista lappy to work with my wireless network. It's used it desktop mode with an ethernet cable now.

Been through customer support and it seems the wireless card is broken, so sending it back to be replaced. Not Microsoft's fault I guess!

Interesting, with Vista and 7, I found it almost easier to set-up wireless than on the Mac...

Taken it into work and it works fine. Seems to be something to do with my sky broadband router as they're both netgear dg834gts. Aaarrrgh. Means that the new one's probably going to do it too.

Oh, it knew the wireless network was there. The network was there, plain as day, but the system just refused to accept the password, no matter what I tried. I've never seen so many different dialog boxes to navigate, either. On OS X, it's one pref panel with a subsidiary panel for the techy bits if required.

Still, we don't use in laptop mode anyway, so the ethernet suffices. Best Beloved is actually using it for ham radio right now, and it's not even connected to the interweb. (Must be due about six weeks' worth of OS patches by now!)

It doesn't sound that much improved from what I experienced with XP

Oh the shame!

JUst got home and tried it to see if there's any settings I could possibly change on the router and saw that I'd been using the wrong password! All working fine now...

.... .... .... ...

is that morse code for

Class.

Hmm, that sounds like the idiotic "extra" software the hardware manufacturers add to the machines, that just make the stuff more complex.

Under Vista, you just click on the wireless network icon, click on the network you want and type in the password. But manufacturers like HP, Dell etc. think this is too hard and removing that and replacing it with half a dozen different dialogs and different ways of connecting is much easier...

The first thing I do on a new machine is de-install the proprietary wireless "zero config" tools and use the standard Windows one, much easier and less confusing!

I think this, multiplied across the different areas of Windows - video drivers, sound drivers, wireless, camera, security etc. are Microsoft's downfall. Microsoft make it easy to use and not much different to OS X to set up the different bits of Windows. But by the time the OEMs have installed all the unnecessary crap on their machines to "make it easier" for the customer, it clogs the machines arteries up, slows the machine down and makes it a complete nightmare to configure.

It is one of the reasons that I generally do a clean install of Windows on a new machine.

Windows is easy to configure and use. A computer installed with Windows and prepared by an OEM "to take advantage of all the hardware they have installed" is a complete pain in the neck!