networking woes

[Jonathan Hutchins]

So, was there, like, a question you wanted to ask, or are you just kind of 
giving us a whitepaper status-of-your-linux statement?

DHCP, if set up correctly, will provide your laptop with whatever it needs for 
whichever network you're on.  Assuming your goal is to occcasionally be on 
any of the three networks, a script would be handy to do manual config on the 
manual network.  

Note that static vs. dynamic addressing is not the same as DHCP vs. manual 
configuration.

If you're looking for help with the lock-up, can you start the laptop in 
console or single-user mode?  Do you know what chipset, refresh rates, RAM, 
and other settings the system uses?  What did it use under Windows?  What did 
it use under RedHat?