I'm currently using a NetGear connection. It's fine but it's not on wireless so I don't know how it runs on wireless. My router is located at the end of the room and not the center but it doesn't matter because no one really uses it around the house.

So is NetGear really that bad for wireless?

well my pcmcia card that i tried on my laptop was a netgear and it didn't seem to work at all! i had very bad range and the signal strength kept cutting in and out. Windows seemed to say that i only had 1 or 2 bars of reception, but the netgear client said that it was around 50% plus most of the time, and im not sure which one i should have been following. Fedora Core said that the signal strength ranged from mid 40% to around 60%. this reception was only about 10 meters away from the actual wireless router!

I would imagine that the two might be tracking slightly different things, or in slightly different ways. For example, on my laptop windows rates the connection "low" (from the floor above), but the client says "excellent". Since you can't really have an almost perfect connection from a different floor, I am tempted to believe windows for the signal strength. In the past, however, the client said a worse connection, which often resulted in disconnects. So I would guess that either my client has a lower range for "excellent", or it measures something different (i.e. the quality of the signal as opposed to the strength). It's possible that something somewhat similar is happening with yours. And the card itself would have to be poor to get that low a signal from the same room. But don't worry about the different signal ratings; as long as it's connected, it's all right.

I can still surf the net and copy fiels from computer to computer well its just that the range is not the best. i think that if i went and got a pcmcia card or usb dongle that was the same brand as the AC then i might be able to get better reception! i'll give it a try and see what happens!