im having a problem connecting my laptop to the wireless NETGEAR router i have. The wireless LED is on and the PC wired through the router works fine. My laptop has wireless technology integrated in it but it is not picking up the wireless network connection. I have no clue what to do.

There are a couple of things you need to check. I would start by checking to make sure the wireless card is on (Some laptops such as toshibas actually have a little switch to turn the wireless on and off, others have software to control this feature) The other thing you need to check is that you turned on the wireless features of the netgear router. If you surf to your gateway ip address (probably 192.168.0.1) and enter your username/password (probably still the defaults) you should see a section covering the wireless features. For an easy setup, just turn on the wireless with no security features for now. Once you get that working I would recommend the use of a WEP key. Hope that helps. Once on, you should be able to at least see the wireless connection.