Laptop ?????s

[A10Chief]

I'm about to get deployed for 4 months and I am trying to buy a cheap laptop to take with me. I was searching some sites and saw that most of the cheap laptops (under about $600) have something called 56K/NIC. Does this mean it can only get dial-up? I only need it for school (internet and word processing capabilites) and poker (whatever that takes beyond internet access). Anybody give me some advice. Again, I am not willing to spend more than about 500-600, as I don't need anything fancy.

[eeeee]

NIC is a network interface card.

There are many combo cards on the market -- both ethernet & phonemodem on one card. This sounds like one of those.

The cheap part is that it is an addon card, rather than built in. The great part is that if it breaks, or is somehow unsuitable, you can replace it through the mail, even overseas.

[Anonymous]

laptops (under about $600) have something called 56K/NIC.

Sounds like a 56K modem (for dial-up) to me. For another $50 you can get a wireless card or upgrade the NIC to a 10/100 network card (just means you can plug into a network, i.e. high speed internet).

Spend the money on the better NIC that has both modem and NIC, get wireless if you have that type of connection available, you will be happier.