Hardware for a Presario with Linux support

[Vicente Aguilar <bisente@bisente.com>]

Hi everyone.

I've got a Compaq Presario 905 and I'm planning on buying a wireless
network card and a webcam for it, and of course, I want them to work
with Linux. I'm running Debian Woody and the latest stable kernel from
kernel.org.

The laptop has an expansion slot on the back of the screen, i.e., on the
top of the cover when you close it. This expansion slot can be used for
small devices like an internal microphone or a wireless card. I don't
know the technical details about this expansion system, I think that
internally it has to be a PCI or PCMCIA bus, but I really don't know it
for sure. As the laptop has only one PCMCIA slot, I'd like to have an
internal card installed on that screen-expansion slot, but I don't know
if it is supported in Linux. Anybody else with a Presario laptop has had
any experiences with these kind of expansion system?

Regarding the webcam, I already have a Logitech Pro 3000 cam which works
great in Linux in my desktop machine, but it doesn't work at all on the
laptop, *not even in Windows*. I think it's some kind of hw
incompatibility between the laptop USB port and the cam. The Compaq
technical support staff told me that they've seen this kind of
incompatibilities with some laptops and some USB devices, because some
USB devices require more power than the (limited) laptop USB port can
give to them. So, anybody has a webcam running without problems in their
Linux laptop? Which one? Are the Linux drivers really ready for use, or
they just work so-so?

Any information would be really appreciated. :) 

Thanks in advance.

-- 
 Vicente Aguilar <bisente@bisente.com> | http://www.bisente.com