4 days? Take it back to Best Buy, see if you can get swapsies.

Failing that they have the Geek Squad in house at most stores.

If it's 4 days old, take it back to exchange it. But what kind of strange things is it doing?

Is the wireless network "security enabled"? With a little icon of a lock showing? (sorry, dumb question, but basics first)

Is the laptop running XP or Vista?

Is it running the standard Microsoft wireless network software, or did Dell load some other wireless management software?

Are you in metro SF, or can you meet therein w/ laptop?

In any case, my email should be visible in my profile, send me a note.

Re connecting to wireless network -- I click on the network, it does the "trying to connect" little page, then it says it can't connect, then there's a "diagnose the problem" thing to click on, then the diagnose the problem page says we have to "manually open" another program first, and then when I try to open that program it says error5 access denied. The end.

Re rest of it -- monster child reports that it's freezing up. (He also tends to download music and picture files constantly, so don't know if that's part of it.) Norton anti-virus is running on it.

Triode, it's currently an unsecured wireless network (I know, I know, the guy is coming in February to do the security part (and other stuff), I don't know how to do that).

I think it's XP not Vista but I'm not sure (laptop is in my kid's room right now).

I don't know which wireless program -- it looked like the standard one but I'm not sure.

I live in the Castro and have a car, so I will email you.

Woo! Laptop meetup! We want pictures!