hi brian,
My dad has the same netgear router as you. Did you get a dongle with the router? If you did then disable the laptops' wireless card and try the dongle. You should also check if there are any updates for the card or software for it.
If you get a high speed connection wired into the laptop but a poor connection with the wireless card then it would appear that the card is the problem and this
can be software(driver) based or hardware based.
You should set your adapters to default,set the wireless card speed to 54Mbps, update the drivers, make sure that you are not running multiple firewalls, drop the firewall on the router.Try the router with an 'open' setup (no wep/wpa). Try the dongle or try the laptop with another wireless router. With netstumbler you should be able to find other wireless networks and try to connect to them.
Can give some details about the hardware you are using, laptop maker, wireless card and operating system. |