[Q] I'm very seriously considering purchasing a Compaq Aero for home and office
use, but there's two issues that still need to be resolved. First, I have to
hook the Aero up to a LAN at work, but need access to the network at home via
modem. Rather than buying separate PCMCIA cards, I'd like to get the combo
cards that Megahertz and Xircom both sell. Has anyone had any experience in
using either or both of these with the Aero?

[Q] I'm about ready to hook my aero/linux to my lan. The choices are PCMCIA and
using the parallel port. Linux seems to support several PCMCIA cards (I'm
leaning towards a LinkSys I saw advertised for $159) and the DE-600 port
adaptor. I know the parallel port will be slower (Ethernet HOWTO suggests
~80KB/S) but it might be more convenient if I want to use the floppy or modem
at about the same time (SLIP service perhaps). Is the EPP an issue (I've
gathered it's not 100% compatable)? Any thoughts? experiences? comments? war
stories? conquests? recommendations? warnings? (any more synonyms? :-))

[A] I'm using a LinkSys parallel port adapter on my 10base2 LAN at home. My
only complaint is that the network connection hangs if the Aero goes into sleep
mode. I chose this route over a PC Card (isn't that what they're calling PCMCIA
these days?) for maximum flexibility.

[A] I have been using the 3-Com 3c589 pcmcia with linux on an aero 4/33c. It
works great. I don't have any experience with the parallel port adapters,
however using a pcmcia net card under linux has some advantages. The pcmcia
card services package written by David Hinds, works GREAT. It provides most of
the functionality that the Compaq windows stuff had; hot swap, graphical tool,
automatic configuration including setting up the interface's address, netmask,
etc. (ifconfig), and tearing this down upon card removal. I seem to get good
throughput although I have not measured it. I would recommend the pcmcia.

[A] I've heard that Xircom will not release the programming details for their
cards, so you may want to stay away from them if this matters to you, or if you
ever wanted to run Linux on your Aero.

[A] Thanks to all who responded with their experiences with ethernet on the
Aero 4/33c under Linux. I am happy to report that I am now running Linux 1.2.1
and Don Hind's pcmcia package (v 2.5.5) with a Linksys ethercard and the compaq
14.4 modem cards and am very pleased with the results. I have X running and
picked up the latest beta version of netscape (1.1b) which runs remarkably well
over SLIP as well.