[SWLUG] Wireless USB Dongle Help

[Jon Reynolds]

Hi all,

I have acquired an Edimax USB Wireless dongle, hoping it would just
plug-n-play with Ubuntu but it hasn't, or at least not on the laptop I
am trying to install it on, an old Dell Latitude.

Here's the dongle:
http://www.edimax.co.uk/en/produce_detail.php?pd_id=3&pl1_id=1&pl2_id=44

The laptop seems to recognise the hardware as far as I can tell but it
certainly isn't working as it should; i.e. no wireless networks detected
in Network Manager.

I think the laptop is just USB1.0 so whether that prevents it from
working I don't know. 

But I just need some pointers to the obvious steps to take to try and
check whats working and whats not. It came with some linux drivers, but
I just get errors when trying to compile them that I don't understand.

Thanks in advance.

Jon Reynolds