Question for more techy people on my flist - desktops and wireless networking, how do you do it? I expected it to be an add-on card, but after searching New Egg, I can find no such thing. My last experience with desktops and networking was something like seven years ago, installing a ethernet card in an old Dell, so I'm really behind the times.

The reason for this is that I'm planning on using my income tax refund to build a media box/NAS, because I have 250 GB of disks scattered across my desk, and am tired of my roommate's PS3 refusing to play any of my older AVI files and mucking up sound decoding on some of the newer ones. My basic plan is to install MythBuntu to provide a video front end, and then use Samba for file sharing - if MythBuntu won't let me install Samba, I'll probably go for a normal Ubuntu build, strip out the extras and then toss in MythTV and Samba.

The two biggest planning hurdles so far are aforementioned wireless networking - I have absolutely zero access to the router in the house, so wired is basically out of the question - and trying to find a motherboard/CPU/graphics combo that's both cheap and space-efficient. The big flaw there is that this system will run fine on a 1.8 GHz single-core CPU and integrated graphics - but I need an S-video or composite video out. And it seems like integrated video + s-video or composite = nonexistant. Which means putting in a cheap dedicated card, which is 1) more space and 2) another $30.

Also, another sign that I haven't touched desktop stuff for a while - my jaw dropped when I saw that you can buy a DVD burner for $25. Mostly because I remember being excited when I bought a CD burner for $60 in like...2001.