my WAP died, got a mesh+ad-hoc wifi network up and running

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I had a similar issue under XP running my newly acquired wireless card. Turns out the generic windows drivers are terribly written and fail to utilise a whole bundle of functionality the card has. Under Ubuntu's OSS drivers it works fine. Since that I've switched distros a couple of times and never had a problem.

Never having used ad-hoc networks myself; never having lived outside of homes or corporations obsessed (for no particular reason) with security, I can't comment on that aspect, but I would suggest that messygeek's comments show that his 'multiple certifications in computing' seem not to have helped him much. He sounds like he couldn't tell one end of thinwire terminator from the other.

To Messygeek:

The Department of Education in the state in which I live, as well as several other states in my country, is beginning the transition process to 'nix (currently investigating which distro to use on their desktop machines) in order to:
a) save money
b) decrease technical support call outs
c) comply with standards
d) improve security.

There is only one abiding reason to use a windows machine: Everyone else does.
Oh, with a rider that people don't produce games for 'nix fast enough yet.

Ad-hoc networks are an industry standard - in ad-hoc networking. Merely because most corporates choose not to use ad-hoc networking does not mean the technology is not standardised. It seems to me that your pedantry and lack of understanding of the original point has turned any expertise you may have from useful knowledge into a giant ball of pretension and condescension.

And yep, before you start, I'm eighteen. Doesn't mean I'm dumb or inexperienced.

To Daedulus: I'm sorry I can't offer more help at this stage, my only suggesting being: try using non-proprietary drivers on that laptop of yours.

Thanks for the heads up SoG, It costs an arm and a leg to develop drivers for Windows hardware, so I am not going to attempt that, seems I am stuck using a VPN overlay, oh well at least anyone connecting will find their pages inverted and in Tengwar

I forget - has anyone suggested running the XP Pro as a virtual machine?

That would remove the physical layer driver problem, as that part of it would be handled by the host (Linux) system, which we know works.

I am tempted to do it, but my mother might freak out, she may however change her mind after this. I have told her many times that a Windows VM running under Linux is more secure and easier to backup/restore then Windows on its own.