It is a pathetic legacy of windows that it allows manufacturers to push "braindead" products out the door with partial chipsets because windows allows them to offload 1/2 the work to the software driver (and with a corresponding performance hit to your memory and processor). Perfect example is "Win-modems" which functioned only under windows but cost 1/2 the price of a modem with a full chipset on the board. Will this software emulation problem be fixed with windows vista? Who knows.. I guess we'll find out in 5 more years when MS finally release it [Linked Image] I have bought store-brand ethernet cards before (aka Comp-USA..) but only after I researched the chipsets and figured out which ones would operate under linux, which usually meant that they were full comtroller chipsets, not ones that relied on windows "software emulation" of functions that should have been incorporated into the device in the first place (except that the manufacturer wanted to save a few bucks by using a cheaper chipset). I have never had an ADSL modem that was windows only- maybe I have just been lucky, but the ones I have gotten were platform independent and used a browser based configuration, which didn't limit me to windows only.

I guess my point is research your hardware. In my opinion, if a given piece of hardware functions under unix/linux, that makes it a "buy" in my book.. and if it is Win-only, I pass on it because I think it is a false economy to buy hardware that leaves you tied to one manufacturer's software.