After having verified over the phone from IBM's Service Hotline that there was nothing more I could do to get our IBM ThinkPad T23 to boot (thing would not even flash the IBM logo on the screen or do its memory test although light indicators for the battery and drive bay came on), I took the T23 to IBM's Service Center (thankfully, only a 5-minute walk from our office). They said they'd call within 2 hours to let me know the status and sure enough within 2 hours they called to say that they had fixed the machine and I could pick it up any time — amazing! The problem turned out to be a defective "combo card" (802.11b wireless LAN and something else) which they replaced — swiftly! I figure most other computer companies would take 3 days to a week to do the same thing. The T23 also comes with a 3-year warranty — nice!

When I got the T23 back in our office, I got stuck trying to hook it back up to our wireless LAN. Foolishly, these were the reasons why I could not get the T23 to access our wirless LAN:

1. Forgot that my colleague, Alex, had disconnected the network cable to our Apple AirPort (wireless LAN) Base Station so that he could connect to a temporary machine, via a wired, FastEthernet connection
   
2. Failed to realize that since the wireless LAN card in the T23 was new, it had a new MAC address that I had to add to the AirPort Base Station's "Access Control List"