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Gremmie is correct, the mW usage of a card is the overwhelming factor in signal strength. For example, most home wifi setups use access points and radio cards that use 30mW (e.g. LinkSys, D-Link). Commercial setups, however, will use 100 mW which I believe is the USA non-military maximum. An example is the ever-popular Cisco 350 series and above.
I work heavily with both setups (30/100 mW) at work and the Cisco Aironet 340 (30 mW max) has a huge disadvantage over the 350 (100 mW). The coverage isn't just 30% worse, but its actually some sort of factor in the exponential range worse. Note that if you use an access point, make sure it doesn't have a power setting in its configuration. Most don't but some do require you to input what power level to use.
Finally, remember that signal "strength" is not nearly as important as signal "quality". A wifi rep. brought that to my attention once, and was correct. If you have 2% strength, data still goes through, so long as the quality is high. 40% quality, OTOH, spells bad news.
*Phil
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