Thank you very much for the tutorials and I think I have got the idea now. I should be ashamed of myself having to ask if I am supposed to be taking MCP exams(I keep putting them off as do most of my class, those who took them mostly failed).

No problem with the MAC address it is safely noted and in fact I had to quote it when I rang NTL to activate my broadband.

Right I will buy two cards one for my main XP Pro computer, one for my husband's XP Home machine. My two older machines will be connected via cable as and when I want to use them on the Internet.