New at wireless networking. Someone please help me?!

[truflip]

my parents want to be able to connect to the internet (finally) and unfortunately, I cannot afford to run ethernet cables from the basement all the way to their room. Its jus too much of a mess and too time consuming to do so. anyway, my sister is coming home soon from university so shes gonna want her laptop to be connected too..

I thought its a good time to go wireless. I need advice on the following:
-what brand of wireless routers to get
-brand of wireless cards
-how to set it up (placing the router in a good location for good connectivity)
-how to secure the connection (I think i have an idea how to do this.. set up the router to accept only the mac address of each computer i wanna connect right?)
-how to get optimum performance

I would like to keep my computer connected to the router by wire.. i like the reliability since I play online games (also would save me $50)

So my budget is around $120-150 Canadian Dollars. So far, I got my eye on the following:
-Linksys Wireless-G Broadband Router
-Linksys Compact Wireless-G Router
-Linksys Wireless G PCI Adapter

I bought this D-Link Wireless-G Starter Kit yesterday and i set it up properly n got it running but its too unreliable. it kept dropping connections even when the computer is 10 feet away.

 

[Tedster]

I highly recommend linksys wireless-g . Getting the crypto set up can be a pain, but once it is set it works like a charm. This is a very good brand and highly reliable.

Setting it up isn't hard. Just follow the instructions in the box.
The crypto portion is the only difficult part and that is with your receiving computers. Just make sure everything matches exactly in your crypto settings.
Running an unsecured wireless network is foolish.

 

[truflip]

thanks Tedster. the wireless-g Linksys is available here. Just refunded the D-Link today. I will be getting the Linksys once I rack up a bit more cash. I also read around bout them, seems like a reliable and good pick. thanks so much!

 

[amnya]

if i were you, i would stay away from linksys, they die fast and unreliable, go for 3com, netgear or asus