I'm sorry to hear that you had so much trouble. I have a desk top and have comcast as my HSI provider. My roommate just bought a laptop and wanted to get a wireless hook up for it. She called comcast and they told her that she could plug it into my modem and they won't charge me any extra for this.

She went to Best Buy and bought a linksys wireless-G 2.4GHz broadband router. I put the disc that came with it in computer and followed the directions. It was very easy to hook everthing up. At first I couldn't get any internet connection but then it worked. She then tried her laptop and it didn't work at first because she had to turn on a switch and then click on the linksys box on her router options. It then worked and is still running great. It now seems like my connection is even faster than it was before.