[mcarora]

As promised, here is the update!

After work last night, I took my ethernet cable to my neighbours house and tried to the insert it into the port that I had previously assumed to be the modem. As I suspected it did not fit! Before putting the machine back in its place, I double checked the USB connections. I found that there were two ports and both were in use. One was a white cable, connecting the machine to the keyboard and the second was connected to the printer. This did confuse me, because my nieghbours had on a number of occasions in the past assured me that the cable modem was connected via USB! In any case I went to the cable modem and noticed that it was connected via ethernet. I then traced the ethernet cable back to the machine and found that there was no adapter. In fact there was an ethernet port which the cable was plugged into. This obviously confirms the suspicions that both Chris and Stuart C had and made me feel rather foolish. The other thing which I found quite peculiar was that the ethernet port and the modem port were not close to one another. On PCs I am accustomed to seeing them side by side, so maybe its a MAC thing!

In any case, this pretty much takes out the need for any kind of adapter. I intend to purchase a Belkin 54G wireless router. I will connect both the MAC and printer to the router, both with ethernet cables, and setup their soon-to-be purchased Dell Laptop wirelessly to the router. I think that should take care of everything.

Stuart C/Chris - I assume that this will be possible and should work without any problems?

With regards to the router, I selected the Belkin 54G because it seems reasonably priced and from what I have read elsewhere on the net can cater for both systems. Is anyone aware of any concerns regarding this particular router?

Once again thanks to all for your help! As you can tell, when it comes to Macs, I am rather clueless!!