My brother found a 3Com Fast Ethernet 10/100 Base-TX PC Card at his workplace, with no manuals or anything. Recently, I bought a Dell Inspiron 1200 with no wireless card, and I am trying to figure out if this PC card he found is of any use to me.

I was thinking of buying a wireless card (I don't know the proper industry name) so I could use my notebook wirelessly just as he does. I'd like to know if this PC card can help me accomplish this.

To be honest, I don't know the difference between NIC (Network Interface Cards) and wireless cards. I popped this PC card into my notebook, and XP detected it. However, I dont know where to go from there.

I am guessing I have to do more than simply putting the card in....installing drivers, changing settings, etc.

If this PC card will do the job for me, I won't have to buy a wireless card.

My brother has a Dell Inspiron 1150 and it came with a wireless card. Therefore, he didn't have to install anything to use the Internet wirelessly.

I've done some more reading and it turns out it NOT a wireless card.

if that is a wired NIC, it is not too old, Windows XP should detect it have drivers for it and it should work fine just by hooking it up which would be sliding it in the slot and plugging in the nic wire (cable).

I checked to see if XP would detect it, and it did. But that's not going to help me, I think, because I need a wireless card.