With ISC, EC-Council and ISACA certs you can just pay the yearly mainenance fee and collect and record enough CPEs for the 3 year refresh cycle and you don't have to re-take the exam, or you could choose to re-take it, but you'd be crazy imo to go that way. It's more hassle and more money to re-do the exam.

It's hard to say what the issue is without knowing what wifi card your netbook uses (or at least what netbook it is, which would narrow that down to one or two different choices)

As everyone else said it's probably a driver issue. If you have a Broadcom based wifi card it is probably because you haven't chosen which driver you want, the BT43 open-source driver or the Broadcom STA driver.

You would have to plug in the Ethernet card to connect you up to the net and then run the System->Administration->Hardware Drivers control panel and choose which one you want. Ubuntu will then download it.

Yup. Good general overview.
Points you in the direction of additional materials on the net. Gives you a good idea of what the main focus of the exam will be.

I have to disagree with you guys. In my experience you cannot get a helpdesk job without an MCSE. It may be a lot of reading and learning, but it is a basic baseline upon which other knowledge is built.

MCSE may be a complex cert to get to compared to other beginner certs, but everyone has one and if you don't you won't get far. That said, it is NOT a security cert. ...but there is knowledge that it encompasses that is important to have to begin to know what to do in security.

I took CISSP before GSEC. I still haven't done GSEC, and probably won't get the opportunity for at least a year. The reason (misguided as it was) was that i was thinking I could use the study time for the GSEC towards the CPE credits needed to maintain the CISSP. (since I wanted both anyway) The reason I say it was somewhat misguided is that yes, that is certainly worth some CPE credits, but what I had not known is that I would not have any trouble whatsoever coming up with enough credits anyway. CPEs, I was told over and over again, were a pian in the butt and hard to come by with current budget constraints. That is pure BS. I have had my CISSP since June 2009, and now, not even a year later I've already got more than my 3 year renewal's worth of CPEs. I don't bother to record everything that might count as CPEs.

Take the one that interests you more first. That said, I learned a LOT preparing for the CISSP and I am very glad I did it.

I studied for 3 months.
I read the Shon Harris book cover to cover.
I read many of the documents referenced in the Shon Harris book, especially in areas where I was not already quite familiar with the material.
I read/watched whatever I could find for free online
I read most of the Official Guide To The CISSP CBK (first edition)
I took a 1 week review seminar at deloitte, taught by John Birdie, one of the authors on the Official Guide To The CISSP Exam (out of print)

Going in I was fairly confident that I knew enough to pass, but still quite nervous.