[PD] stability of Gem for video playing

[cdr]

> Additionally, I couldn't get my wireless working, and without the 
> wireless, I can't get on the net, to look up Google and figure out 
> what's wrong!!!

90% of notebooks including Toshiba's use the Centrino platform, and Intel directly supports open drivers for their network and video hardware

if it screwed up, one of two things, either you have some windows-only card and will have to use ndiswrapper, or you just need to: modprobe ipw2200, dhclient wlan0

its much easier than windows, when you factor out the 'preinstalled', to get windows up you have to waste a CD burning network drivers, click your wrist off downloading and installing video drivers, disabling services, and installing apps, then hope you dont go to the wrong website or open the wrong email.  to bring another gentoo box online i just pop in knoppix, untar portage, chroot, and 'emerge -K kde mozilla-firefox', requires 0 manual intervention except for a few minutes mostly spent waiting for the CD to load..

> 
> Also, I couldn't figure out how to access files on my hard drive, 
> through Linux - will Linux even read my Windoze partitioned drives?

theres readwrite available for NTFS, HFS+, VFAT, etc. try mounting your reiser or ext drives from OSX(P)...

> 
> The dual-boot is a necessity, I have a lot of important music and other 
> files that I've made with windows software that I really can't give up 
> on.

which? just about everything works in the latest WINE. even complex audio apps with openGL GUIs like Ableton Live. you can output right to JACK