http://www.linuxcompatible.org/Fedor....0_t33597.html
For your wireless gateway you'll need to find the drivers from somewhere for these (on the internet most probably). I use the ethernet interface through my NIC (fortunately there were drivers for that already in my debian distrubution).
What is the bootloader installed on your laptop? Grub or Lilo?
LILO: For lilo you'll need to open up a file called /etc/lilo.conf for editing. Look for the line called "delay = number" and change the value of number to how many tenths of a second you want it to delay. (If delay is not there create it on a new line).
Grub: Open up the file /boot/grub/menu.lst for editing, and change the number for "timeout = number" (This is done in seconds and not tenths of a second).
A lot of the programs mentioned will have counterparts in linux, e.g Microsoft Office has an almost exact replica called Openoffice.org in linux. Just run a search for the others.
Fedora Core (2.6.9-1.667smp), Fedora Core-up (2.69-1.667. Those are the same operating system using different versins of the linux kernel (or the same kernel in safe mode and normal mode I think). If its safe and normal then your probably better off in keeping them both because if something goes wrong you might need to use the safe mode.
Changing of the menu entry names etc. has to be done in their configuration files.
/etc/lilo.conf and /boot/grub/menu.lst respectively.
Hope this helps.