acer laptop problems with wireless and printing

[Dave Stevens]

Hi,

I have a friend who has an Acer TravelMate 2480 laptop. I've been trying to 
get him to use Ubuntu instead of the currently installed MS Windows XP 
Professional. I partitioned the disk and installed Ubuntu 7.10 on one 
partition. He now has a working dual boot. The problem area are only two but 
I can't seem to make any headway on them.

For one thing, he has a Atheros AR5007EG wireless network NIC. This doesn't 
work in Ubuntu although it does in Windows. I could add a USB wireless NIC 
and then could presumably pick one for which there is good support (is there 
one like that?) but my friend assures me that carrying it around is a pain in 
the extremity and he would not likely do so, losing a huge amount of 
functionality and in practice making the conversion to Linux fail. I've found 
solutions advertised using nswrapper and a workaround using a source only 
package that I could in principal compile and link to test. This, even if it 
works, seems like a huge fuss, given the very large numbers of these laptops 
on the market - is there really no better solution?

Another problem is that this laptop has no parallel port, so he can not plug 
in his Canon 4100 printer - it is parallel only. He has a USB to parallel 
adapter cable. This works fine with his desktop system (XP) just by plugging 
it in. Connects, installs the driver, prints, just as advertised. But I can 
not get it to work in either XP Pro or Ubuntu 7.10 on the laptop. No idea 
why. Have (on Windows) updated everything in sight and the manufacturer's 
driver CD contains only an unhelpful note that XP will recognize it 
automatically. For the desktop unit that seems to be borne out, so why not on 
the laptop? A Windows solution (I know this is the Ubuntu list) would be 
handy, a solution on Ubuntu even better.

Ideas? Pointers to docs?

Thanks in advance,

Davev
-- 
There is no single government agency that views sustainability through a broad 
lens, taking into account the values of the people affected by government 
decisions. Any model of sustainability that is driven solely by an economic 
engine is deficient if it is incapable of taking into account social values. 

Mr. Justice David Vickers, BC Supreme Court in Tsilhqot'in Nation v. British 
Columbia,2007