First, I'm quite amazed at how much all of the routers cost in the UK (~ twice as much as in the US).
That having been said, my advice is as follows:
- buy from a major manufacturer (i.e. one that sells numerous different wireless products and has shown a commitment to providing firmware updates to make their current products work properly)
- buy the router and any wireless adapters from the same manufacturer
- as is almost always the case with technology, assume that the throughput of whatever you buy will be slow compared to what will be available a year from now for the same price; so buy only what you need now (not in the future)
- go with at least 802.11g (54Mbit/sec); anything faster currently uses proprietary methods that are usually only supported by the devices of one or a few manufacturers; this is not a problem if you buy everything from the same manufacturer but may affect the wireless networks of people living within a 100 feet or so of you
- make sure that the device supports WPA (or WPA-PSK) encryption; just about all wireless devices should support WEP encryption but you want something that supports WPA as there are problems with WEP; when buying a wireless adapter, make sure that it supports WPA encryption under the OS you are using (an issue with anything prior to Windows XP); ideally, the devices would also be compatible with WPA2 (i.e. WPA using AES encryption as opposed to TKIP).
- buy the cheapest device (or combination of devices) the satisfies the above points
Once you get the router...
- turn on WPA-PSK encryption
- change the default password of the router
- change the default SSID of the router
-Yves