This is my first laptop, and i bought it to finish my final paper and other final semester tasks. The detail:

Acer Aspire 4710, with Mandriva 2007.1 Spring as the os.

1. My sound dissappeared after i don't know what i did. My soundcard is
ATI, the supporting chip is Intel Connexant.
2. I own a Siemens M75 cellphone with a driver cd, one of the
programmes included is to turn it into a gprs modem. So far it only
works with Windows. The laptop also came with driver cd for the
hardwares inside it, including to activate the internal modem,
bluetooth capability, etc.
The latter is meant just for Windows Vista.

Could anybody tell me how do i activate those drivers? For the cellphone and the laptop's hardwares. How or where can i find similar softwares to activate them or anything, please. This is my first time using Linux and in this case Mandriva. Or i'll be tempted to resort back to Windows.

Thank you very much for your kind attention, whoever that is outside in this world.

Ken

Start by looking at the output of "sudo /sbin/lspci" and "sudo /sbin/lspci -v". This will list the controller chips controlling these devices. Use this information when searching on google and this sites HCL. Also enter the exact model number of your laptop into a google search. Often a person will produce a web page or a blog containing the complete configuration for their computer. Entering '"Aspire 4710" Linux' might turn up such pages for your laptop model.

For the cellphone, I think you just need to install and configure bluetooth.

By the way, are you using LaTeX to typeset your paper?

Thank you very much. I'm totally new to this Linux based os. No, i haven't transformed into fritos loving code monkey ( a programmer friend of mine tries to realize it though), and i don't use LaTex for my paper. Currently i have one pc with windows xp and this laptop with Mandriva 2007.1. On the pc i use ms office 2003 and in the laptop i'd like to install and use oxygen open office 2.3.0. I'll be so glad if you'll ever be there the next time i need help. I'l be glad if one day i can be the one giving help to others as well, especially in this Linux world.

I'm sorry to bother further, this code looking thing you mentioned to me, "sudo /sbin/lspci" and "sudo /sbin/lspci -v", besides that i use them as keywords in some search engine and this site's hcl, are they some command i should type in the mandriva's programming screen? I forget what it called, command-console something, but we can write some programming language in that os, as far as i know. Did you mean that? Thank you.