Do these work?

It is definatly easier to setup a wireless connection using the same companies AP and wireless card but it isn't that much harder to do it with different companies hardware. You will just have to manually enter a wep key on your computers to connect to the AP (if you choose to use that form of wireless security).
You will most likely have to connect a machine to it via wired connection for the initial setup of the router. There you can make and record a wep key and then enter it on your computers when prompted by the windows wireless manager thing.

<A HREF="http://www.folken.net/myrig.htm" target="_new">My precious...</A>

Not necessarily, I had much MORE problems with DLink router and laptop wnic than I have (actually I don't have any) with different brand router (Actiontech) and DLink wnic.

And by the way, why do you need an encryption at home? Who'z gonna break into your PC? Neighbor? Common, just don't broadcast your ID and you'll be safer than mouse unda da floor

..this is very useful and helpful place for information...

So...they should work together then? I'm on a really tight budget and need to order by 01/31.

Yes, that will work fine. Older WLAN gear so no WPA but it has WEP and you should use it. Use what is available to you. Turn off SSID broadcast unless doing so gives you problems, though that isn't a huge deterrent anyway to motivated war drivers, MAC filtering (an easy workaround to that) and WEP (hackable with alot of data traffic) WLAN's are inherantly insecure. use the tools available to you. Unless you want to setup a honeypot or something like that but it doesn't sound like you had that in mind.

Turning the SSID off can actually cause some issues and at the very least it is going to make your client work harder, sending out more discovery beacons, even though it won't find the AP your looking for. If it isn't a problem it's not a bad thing to do but it's certainly no substitute for encryption and the more functional security measures.

So this will be the only machine on the network then I take it. Figured you had more than one since of course leaving one exposed machine could affect everything on the same segment. Bandwidth theft as well. Someone logging onto your Router/AP and flashing the firmware or just blowing it up. There are other possibilites. Don't be a dope, secure your network. There is no reason not to.

I'm not going to not secure it, it's jsut not my first concern. Getting the internet on two machines is first priority.