My daughter has Cable modem which works pretty fast. She has 2 computers, 1 is hardwired to the router Linksys WRT54G V8 (very new) and the other desktop is about 15 feet away with open doors that uses the wireless PCI card WL-138G V2 (also very new).
There are no concrete walls, no metal screens, no other hardware that could interfere.
I saw her this afternoon and watched how SLOW the download of any internet page is on the wireless desktop. Sometimes dropping to 1 KB /sec., whereas the hardwired desktop is instantaneous.
She has tried another router (a Netgear) and another (same model) PCI card by ASUS with same results.
Both computers are running windows XP and are in the 2.6GHZ range with 1 GB of RAM.
Sometimes, the wireless computer says "loaded with some errors" but never says what the errors are and the web page does seem to load fine (MSN.COM) and one can go from there to hyperlinks, but again, very slow.
What can possibly be the problem?