computer questions: ethernet, spyware, viruses

(1) What is ethernet? Does it have something to do with internet connections, DSL, etc? Do I need it? I'm looking for a new laptop. Should I care if it has 10/100 or Gigabit Ethernet?

Norton Antivirus finds nothing. SpyCOp finds nothing. I have ZOne Alarm Pro. But I have something. I have to type every other letter two or three times. My computer is slow and doesn't recognize every keystroke. My CAPS lights is always on. My USB port works intermitently.

Sounds as if it is time to save your data files, and completely reload from CD after full formatting your hard drive.

I last updated everything on Sept 2. But I don't think I "closed" the CD, and I read a review that the Thinkpads (which I plan to buy) don't read "open" CDs. And I can't close it now.

Yesterday I reinstalled Win 98 -- and now the built-in CD-ROM and USB CD-RW are having problem. I can't back up anything to them!

I reinstalled Win 98 again today, there was an additional error message, but still no full CD access. During both install attempts, the install froze when there was "Less Than One Minute" togo before completion. So I had to reboot.

The CDs sometimes recognize what's on it, sometimes not. I can RUN Norton from it, but I can't reinstall Nortan from it.

I have a 40 meg PC card Clik Disk. If that still works, I may have to try and copy from that.

I'll probably order a new laptop today, try and save what I can on Clik Disk, and creak along waiting for the new laptop to arrive. I only wonder what will go wrong next?

I've long hated Windows, reboot several times a day, if not hour, and am more motivated to learn Linux. I also plan to drop Compuserve ($25 a month) which I got in 1995 (because Rush and NR endorsed it), but it's been going downhill ever since AOL bought it.

If you get a new tower, it will probably have a spare Disk slot, inside. All you have to do is change the jumper on the old disk to make it a "slave" instead of a "master", and plug in the ribbon cable and spare power cable. That way you get all your data from the old system. I have done this with the last two tower upgrades and now I have 160 GBytes on the newer machine and 80 GBytes on the older one.

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