Adrian - true, there is the matter of cost... I might well be getting hold of a Cisco hardware firewall/ethernet switch thingy from a friend, so I guess all I need to plug into that would be a wireless access point and then both the HTPC and future lappy (when I actually find one I can afford!!!!) can connect to. But then I need to buy a WAP for the ethernet switch and a PCI wireless card for the HTPC and a PCMCIA or USB wireless dongle for the lappy..... So might end up costing similar anyway!