I had similar problems a while ago with a 802.11b card built in by HP. (can't remember what brand it was) It wasn't that the distance was too much, it's just that it would drop the connection if the traffic got high. Of course, this would be the worst time to drop the connection. A lot of times windows would tell me the connection was unavailable when packets were still getting through, but plenty of times packets would stop going through. Rather infuriating. The Orinoco/Lucent card in the other laptop worked flawlessly. I went back and for with support for a bit, and they were no help. Eventually, I tried an older driver I found on the HP website, and all the problems disappeared. It was kind of annoying that windows update always wanted me to install a new driver from then on, but it worked. So to make a long story short, buy an orinoco card and test it out, they're basicaly the reference standard in wireless gear these days.

Matthew