Does Xandros offer a live cd? I like to evaluate a distro before commiting to HD install.

Not that I know of. I tried it once and hated it, but that was just my experience. Have a look at the reviews.

No, they don't offer a live CD. However, I'd guess that since you know what a live CD is, Xandros might not be for you.

I installed Xandros OCE 3 on new systems for my wife and my mother, and it's been great for them. However, they're non-technical users who use their PCs mostly for internet and simple office stuff. They don't care that it still uses KDE 3.3, that the official APT repository is small, or that you can't download official packages for KOffice or Quanta+ without subscribing to the Xandros Network. I do care about those things, which is why I use Kubuntu. But if you're looking for a simple desktop for a non-technical Windows user, Xandros is pretty good.

I am looking for a Linux OS that my wife and daughter can run on there pc with out a hitch and as much like Windows as possible, except for the virus, worms and crashes. Also there pc has a wireless pci card ( Ralink rt2500 chipset) that I would hope Xandros could handle. So far only PClinuxOS .92 and Linspire 5.0 have recognized it out of the box. All the rest including Ubuntu/Kbuntu have not worked with it. Thanks.

My wireless cards use the same chipset. Xandros did not detect it out of the box. However, installing the drivers from source is not difficult. The only catch is that you'll have to temporarily hook the system up to a wired network connection in order to download the kernel source and build-essentials package.

Xandros 4.0 which is due next month has much better driver support.