wireless card cannot find wireless router when SSID broadcast is off

From reading old posts I gather that this problem occurs frequently. I figured getting a wireless router and pc card from a quality name like USR would keep me from such trouble, but there it is. The posts I found mention that turning off SSID broadcast is a superficial meaqsure anyway, as with the simplest and readily available tools (and those with bad intentions will come prepared) the cloaked signal can be found easily anyway. As such you're better off using MAC filtering and WPA, which is what I;'m doing, and leaving SSID broadcast on, at least this way the setup works.

regards,

BN