My acer laptop died spectatularly on me about a year ago. 1 in every 100 that you boot the bloody thing it'll work fine every other time the keyboard and touchpad go crazy. My quick fix was to buy another computer and leave my laptop sitting in the corner gathering dust. My brother however told em to install ubuntu on it cos he reckoned the problem might lie in XP. Ubuntu sorted it out! which was great but now i cant get the wireless card to work. my understanding is that the drivers are on there but there's no firmware (although i dont understand that phrase fully to be honest but that's what i've been told).

sorry for the anecdote, can anyone help?

P.S I've only been a linux user for a day or so so i'm still a bit perplexed by the whole thing.