for wireless, you need luck and magic.
i have the belkin router, and my trendware pc card keeps dropping the connection every couple of seconds. my friend is using exactly the same hardware and he gets dropped every 10 min or so.
now i got a dlink u*****2 card, it NEVER drops the connection. at home, the speed will typically remain at 2m even if i'm 10 feet from the router. strength shows only 50%.
at work with all the ap's i always get strong signal and normally a 11m connection (this thing does not work on the u*****2 port somehow).
what model is your card?
"artreal" has a point, i sometimes connect to my neighbor's un protected network and get a 24m link and start bting some large files. :-)