Greetings,

I live in the basement of a house that was converted into a two bedroom apartment. My landlord has a cable modem upstairs hooked up to a wireless router. I have a new desktop computer in my bedroom. My roommate is able to locate a signal using his laptop in the basement, and is going to put his laptop in my room to see if the signal comes through. If there is a signal, I'd like to try out a wireless adapter.

What are the top wireless adapters out there for desktop computers? How do they affect gaming performance? What's the best place to purchase one (newegg.com)? What else do I need to know? Is it worth going wireless, or should I battle with Comcast to set up another modem?

Thanks in advance for answering any of these questions. If these questions are answered already (buried somewhere in this board), I apologize for missing them.

System Specs:
Asus P5ND2 SLI Dlx
P4 640 HT/1024MB RAM
Asus Extreme Nvidia 7800 GTX
200GB SATA HDD
Win XP Home Ed

Only the dead have seen the end of War - Plato

Are you getting a new account (new modem) or sharing wirelessly? If you get a new modem Comcast or your ISP will be glad to install the modem and sell you a new account. If your landlord does not mind your sharing wirelessly then your choices are a wireless adapter (pci or usb), a wireless bridge, or a gaming adapter. The last two options assume you have an ethernet card in your computer. I know nothing about gaming performance. If your roomate is using it at the same time, there might be some degradation. The cost of some form wireless adapter is in the range of $30 up to $70. I have the previous types mentioned plus PCMCIA and they all work.

This will be a shared wireless setup. I will be linking to his network.

FYI: We already tried adding another modem to the house and it became a massive problem. Comcast gave us a hard time with it. That option is still there, but I want to explore the wireless setup first.

I am looking at this card:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16833124178

But I'm not sure of the router's specifications. Does that matter?

Do I need to spend this much for a card? I just want fast internet and to be able to enjoy online games such as Half Life 2, etc...

Only the dead have seen the end of War - Plato

You need to match the type of router, most likely the wireless router will be 802.11g. It could be 802.11g / b / a

However g is backward compatable with b.