Debian and Wireless on an IBM Thinkpad

[Leonid Grinberg <lgrinberg@gmail.com>]

Hello,

I just ordered an IBM Thinkpad A21e. It has a (wired) LAN card, and 2
PCMCI slots, but no wireless card. It also comes with Windows 2000 (a
bug which will soon be squashed).

Anyways, as I am going to be using this laptop with Wi-Fi, I decided
to just buy a wireless card seperately. I have my eyes set on a Belkin
card. However, I want to know some things about wireless with Debian:

First of all, does anybody have any experience with Belkin? Any
problems? I expect that I will have to use ndiswrapper and use Windows
drivers. Will this mean I have to hold on deleting Windows, install
the card and save the drivers to a CD or something similar?

When the laptop can use both wired and wireless connections, how can I
tell it something like: check the wired connection and if that fails,
try wireless? How do I switch when it is on (I expect it is something
like ifdown <WIRED> && ifup <WIRELESS>)?

Also, how do I configure the wireless card to go to a certain hot
spot? For example, if it needs a password. My school has a free Wi-Fi
service without a password, but at home, my router is secure.

Thanks in advance!

--
Leonid Grinberg