T60 3945 WiFi wicd wep wpa wtf?

[R. Luoma]

By installing wicd (http://wicd.sourceforge.net), I seem to have gotten
the Intel 3945 wireless on the Lenovo T60 to work with wireless
access points using WEP enscription (the only ones immediately available).

I would like to try the laptop with WPA but I do not have such available
(unless I purchase a suitable router).  Does anyone have useful suggestions
on where I might conduct such a test?

Also, why should "wicd" work when iwconfig and the default network manager fail?

I am using wicd under Ubuntu 9.04.

This is very strange.

-- 
R. Luoma