[CentOS] Configuring an Intel 3945 wireless card: partial success

Hi,

My wife has a new ASUS laptop with an Intel 3945 wireless card. I'm 
running CentOS 5 on all our desktops here (at work and at home), and I'm 
quite happy with it. I had a partial success in configuring the wireless 
card.

Basically I'm using [base], [updates], [extra] and [rpmforge] repos, 
configured with the yum-priorities plugin. Priority 10 for RPMForge, 1 
for the others.

 From RPMForge, I installed dkms-ipw3945, the driver for my wireless 
card. I gave it a first go with the most basic setup, that is: static 
IP, no encryption.

After installing the driver, the card shows up as eth1. I removed 
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 and edited a minimalistic 
ifcfg-eth1.

After a restart, the interface comes up OK, and I can connect to my 
access point as well as ping machines on the internet.

But now I'd like to install and use NetworkManager. I've read the 
according Wiki entry on the CentOS site. Here's what I did:

1) Added the 'NetworkManager' and 'NetworkManagerDispatcher' services 
(using chkconfig)

2) Removed the 'network' service (also using chkconfig)

3) Rebooted to be sure

Result:

1) The NetworkManager icon shows up OK on the upper right side of my 
GNOME desktop.

2) When an Ethernet cable is connected to the machine, NetworkManager 
configures a connection OK (cable connected to router).

3) The wireless ESSID of my access point shows up OK in NetworkManager. 
Ethernet cables get some sort of priority in NetworkManager, so I 
unplugged the cable and clicked on the wireless connection. 
NetworkManager tries to establish a connection for about 30 seconds, but 
fails.

... which leaves me clueless. Any suggestions?

Last detail: for the moment at least, I'm using no encryption at all on 
the access point. We live in a very remote place in the south French 
countryside, there's only hunters and wild boars around, so it's not a 
very friendly place for wlan-hackers :o)

Niki Kovacs