Thanks for taking your time out to post for me!

Funny I thought about posting the model of the modem but didn't want to bother anybody. It's an Encore modem ENF656-EV-CIPR. From what you are saying I should probably try my old internal win modem to see if it works as well.

I'm one of those guys that leaves the cover over my computer off and I also turn it around backwards. I can read my internal modem was made in China and it says Diamond on the card. There are some more tags on it but I will need reading glasses to see them.

It sounds like I should just go ahead and order a Knoppix CD. The company I found charges more than triple the cost of the CD for shipping so it might be a good time to discuss ordering other versions (distributions?) of linux at this time.

If I find I like Knoppix and want to use it all the time (instead of windows) is there any reason I would want to go on booting up from a floppy all the time?

I been reading Knoppix is related to Debain but I was told that Debain was only for hard core geeks. While I might be a hard core windows using geek I want to do the most amount of computing with the least amount of effort. My research led me to believe that the best way to do this was to use SUSE but I had a bad experience trying to get advise from a linux chatroom and all anyone would do was tell me I needed to look it up for myself and direct me to Google which turned me off from using it for several years (till yesterday when I heard a computing talk show recommend Knoppix and discovered this forum).

Of course the obvious question is what if I want to use my CD drive? I read one post on here that recommended VSL (very small linux for any newbies that might come across this thread later) but it seems to me that putting a different linux on my hard drive is the way to go.

If I do fall in love and want to use Knoppix will I have to set up my modem each time I boot up or does it save all that to the hard drive? Also if not can it be written onto the CD? My burner always crashes when I try and copy CD's using windows. I wonder if I will have the same (or different problems) doing it with Knoppix.