need some help here. just moved to dell vostro

.... 1500 (still waiting) for the house and business' we own ive given up the desktop in favor of what i figure will be much better for me overall.. i got the 7500 d2c, 8600 gt, 4gb ram etc for the home and the base 5470 ones for our business (cant wait)... but when asked about the wireless cards i was a bit stumped as this is really my first time dealing with this. i for now have the standard 1300 dell option chosen. they also offer a one model up dell 1400 and the intel model 3945 and 4965... this will not be used on a network at all and when used wireless it will be kinked to the net primarily.

i have some questions and so far this is by far the best place on the net ive found for laptop answers

is it worth the $$ to add a n based card???

should i swap the dell branded board for a intel one??

can i later swap the g card for a finalized n one??

i am also shopping for a router for our home and business. i currently have a 300$ office depot "gift" card for stuff i returned and lost the reciept to (sucks for me i lost big money on that deal), so i want to buy from office depot..

can someone please help me pick the routers out or tell me what i should be buying.. should i get a n based router even with a g based card? so later i can swap to a n card and be ready for it with the router??
they offer a dlink g router right now for 39.99 that states 108mb capable

http://www.officedepot.com/browse.do?Ne=164&Nr=200000&N=200142+4294938786

by far the best price i see there this is on sale in my local store for 39.99

they have the linksys wrt54g and wrt54gs models as well. ive heard of many issues of late with linksys though after being bought out by sisco. but if im right the dell branded card is broadcomm and in that case could i take advantage of the linksys "speedbooster" option with the gs model??

these 2 netgear ones i saw:

http://www.officedepot.com/ddSKU.do...r=200000&N=200142 4294951765&Ne=164&An=browse
http://www.officedepot.com/ddSKU.do...r=200000&N=200142 4294951765&Ne=164&An=browse

not sure how good they are..

hawkins???

http://www.officedepot.com/browse.do?Ne=164&Nr=200000&N=200142+4294962127
a supposed "high gain" unit... does it really work??

sorry for so many questions i just really want to get everything ready for us to switch the business over and also the home to laptops as soon as they arrive. since i spent more on the gpu's and cpu's along with ram i figured maybe get the n wireless but i really am unsure if ill use it for anything..

thanks a million in advance

 

1st. 11n is still draft, what you buy today may or may not work with the finalized spec. It is a concensious that hardware shipped with v2 have the best bet to meet the spec.

As far as wireless cards for notebooks, if you get a 11n you get all of the wiring to support it. Most 11n hardware requires 3 antennas, which is hard to add later.

Dlink makes a very good product. DGL4300 for 11g, or DIR-655 is the upgrade to 11n. If you elect to only buy Linksys 11g, only look at the WRT54GL model and flash it with dd-wrt firmware.

 

problem for me is picking one office depot carries.. i want to use up all this credit there, from what i see most of the separate 11n pci express cards including those on ebay come with an added antenna which seems would get routed around the outer keyboard area according to most of the directions.. also its not to hard to split the lcd plastic and add one up there onl issue would be getting one if it doesnt come with the 11n card

whats the real advantages to 11n besides allowing for much larger file transfers?? i would assume for streaming video and internet usage 11g will always be more than enough until we here start seeing much higher mb rates?? am i wrong??