Simple newb question

[ezatnova]

Tried seraching but wasn't sure how to word this.

I'll soon have a laptop that I want to use wirelessly at home, so I'll get a card and a wireless router. However, when I go to school, I'll have to plug in via a recular wired cat5 ethernet connection. My question is, will the laptop freak out when I swap cards to use different methods of network connection from two whole different configurations of my home and school, or will it not mind and things will still work? If it matters, I'm assuming the laptop has XP since it will be a pretty new model leased to me from the school.

[badger11]

What operating system do you have? If you have Windows 2000 or xp you should be fine. If you have nt 4.0 or win 95 you will want to create a hardware profile for each card to work without any hassles.

[masraum]

The laptop won't care one bit.

[ezatnova]

Thanks guys. I actually found out today that the campus is now full set up for wireless (unlike when I was there 3 yeas ago for undergrad and had to plug in everywhere!) so my question is sort of moot anyway. As long as the laptop won't mind switching from my network at home to the schools when I'm there, automatically once I'm in range. From what I understand, an XP machine set up to favor wireless will "latch on" to any open wi-fi network it comes across, so this shouldn't be an issue.

[indigoshreve]

May work unless the campus has there signal encrypted then you will have to have the "systems keys"<---(Thats what I call it) to access it...or maybe a username and password...