Your best option here is to use a Live CD and try and connect to the
wireless card. You're likely to have good luck with the Dell and Ubuntu.
I've installed it on a couple different Dells and both worked with wireless
just fine.

It came with two wireless G adapter cards, but I don't have wireless at
home, other than as couple of bluetooth dongles I've used for PDA and
Phone, but usually sit in a drawer. I just ran a video via LAN from
another computer and the audio and picture were pretty good.

The Dell web site indicates there are several variations on your computer, such
as screens from 800x600 to 1400x1050, plus different CPUs and memory. If you
were to describe it more fully you might get better advice. (CPU, memory,
screen size in pixels.) At minimum, it's less powerful than today's netbooks.

You don't need a wireless router to see if Ubuntu can talk to your wireless
adapter. If Network Manager can see the adapter, it might tell you there are no
wireless networks available. If you are in a city, it will more likely ask you
to choose among the half dozen networks it can see! My son lives in an
apartment building, and his wireless adapter can see a dozen networks.

Better name would be a Latitude C610. I've been to Dell's website and
looked things up via the service tag number 3t40g11.

I'm just about 1 mile outside the city limits of a small city in
Alabama. They ain't none around here.

While I am at it - I did run a live CD for Ubuntu 9.04 and Mint 7
(Gloria) and both worked fine. Via T1 cable it networks fine with the
other three systems (Jaunty, Gloria and XP).

Anyone know of a good distro for a notebook? Something without as lot
of bloat? Main use would be email, web searching and Open Office. Plus
I prefer Gnome over KDE. Although a game or two and some visual bling
would be nice (as long as it doesn't slow it down to nothing).

Adding, Ubuntu does run well on the Dell D610.

I have an Acer one notebook and would suggest Ubuntu Jaunty remix (as
you like gnome). For me it did the job well but I am waiting for a
Kubuntu remix that does KDE 4.3 as I prefer KDE.
Just my 2c.

I use KDE 4.3 on my netbook with no problems. However, it has 1 GB of RAM. I
changed the settings to work better with reduced screen size and it is
great. I used Ubuntu Remix, but don't like the look so I converted to full
GNOME and KDE.

On an older machine I would consider using Xubuntu (XFCE), Lubuntu (LXDE) or
Fluxbuntu (Fluxbox). These distros are Ubuntu with lightweight desktop
environments that should consume fewer resources, but still look great. I
particularly like XFCE.

Ok, I first tried installing Mint, since that is what is on my main
system. Problem was that when almost done with the install, the disc
hit a bad spot and died with errors. So I installed from my free
Canonical disk of Jaunty and everything is working fine now. Resolution
is 1024x768.just below my current 1280, and on a slightly smaller
screen, so that's fine. Video works BETTER than the desktop, but I just
use the default motherboard video. Sound is fine.

It T1s (Is that a verb? :) to the Internet and the other computers fine.
Found out the battery has been removed, so that cuts down on
portability. Must be connected to the wall at all times to work. New
battery is $135. Refurb is $149 - Go figure! Also has 512mb mem with
max of1gb, Since my desktop is the same (512 max 1G) that works fine.

I just need to go through Synaptic and remove some bloat. Unless there
is a better way of removing unneeded things.

If you are still monitoring this post, either Puppy or DSL (Damn Small Linux)
are two distros that install with about a 50 Mbyte footprint.