http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-howto/31190-when-wireless-lans-collide-how-to-beat-the-wireless-crowd - The guy is no slouch. maybe not the most technical article I ever read, but it should help you.

Works great! I have been using ShowMyPC for a couple of years now. Remote assistance in windows ain't bad either.

I agree with this post. I am not working on telescopes, but I managed to parlay an IT job into a more specific security related job. The security job is not what is important, the important part is that everything is going digital, everything is run by a server of some sort. And sometimes the IT group is not skilled enough for the specific task. Now I am the only IT guy in an organization that is purely security related. I know everything about every PCs and server we have control of, and the chumps in IT that I used to work with now have to maintain my corporate PC. Like shag said, make your knowledge work for you, just sayin'.

I do not believe you can use Fat32 formatted volumes to make a software raid mirror in any version of Windows, ever. If I'm wrong, tell me, but I have been working with the 'Disk Management' in windows for 15 years and have never been able to do this. Not that I would. 'For portability' is not a good reason to use a file system that was left behind by Microsoft years ago. You can mount an NTFS partition in several O/S's these days effortlessly. I agree with every one else here. Build hardware RAID 0 into your system, use all the space on those disks that you paid for, get some performance out of them. And most of all, PRACTICE RECOVERING YOUR DATA. Do mock-crashes, do some research, READ what other are doing about their problems, make some notes, get acquainted with your hardware, and your backup software, and whatever tools you end up using for data recovery. This is essential for real data loss prevention. Am I preaching? Sorry!

This is a laptop plain & simple. I have a DELL M90. Core 2 4Gb RAM only one hard drive, so you'd need an external drive. Battery is there, you can keep it clean with a bottle of air, 90 watt apower supply, not too bad. The fact is there are going to be compromises not matter what, I think this is an acceptable solution.

Yes, I agree with you, but what I am looking for is something I can make Comcast look at and agree that the problem is theirs and not mine. Packet capture data is probably going to confuse most of the people that I have encountered via Comcast technical support and on site techs too. Maybe I asked the wrong question; maybe what I need is a clue on how to get to the top tier of support at Comcast. Anyone out there know what magic words I have to use to get to the folks who would understand a Wireshark dump?