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One question, why don't you go with 108MB/s wireless? Netgear has some good stuff and I have had good experiance with it.
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I definitely wouldn't mind looking into it. thx for the suggestion. If I ever do get back into online gaming though, I want the connection to be as solid as possible. i.e. if I have to do troubleshooting for games in the future (which I imagine I will somehow) i'd like the connection portion to be 'taken care of', i.e. shored up and working to the best of its ability so it isn't something else I have to factor in unless I exhaust all other options. Isn't it funny how fast tech support from game publishers drop you if you mention you are using wireless?
So even if I end up with a wireless solution I at least want to weigh all my options. Right now i'm taking a look at all three (wired/powerline bridge/wireless) from a cost/effort perspective to determine which would be the best one.
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That old Microsoft wireless stuff is crap in my opinion, as are all USB adapters. However, if you don't have a strong signal, no brand is going to perform well.
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Yea you are probably right. It seems 'ok' on the whole, but no glowing reviews for usb adapters, especially the MS ones. My signal became stronger once I swapped out my MN-510 usb adapter for the Ra-Link (Edimax brand from Newegg) PCI wireless adapter card. It definitely improved my WoW/CS experience. I'm pretty picky though, so little lags and stutters that most others might dismiss or not even notice would occassionally show up, really annoying me. My brother's MN-510 on the other hand seems to petter out occasionally, requiring a base station restart. To be fair though, i'm not sure if it is the MS-Networking software, the USB adapter, or just the base station that seems to drop the signal.
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Check the cable bill carefully - how much is the Internet charge? How many digital TV boxes are you being billed for, and are you using that many?
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One thing I completely forgot about (doh) - was the extra digital box in my parent's room. It's housed in a media cabinet and since I never use their plasma tv I completely forgot about it. Having two boxes plus cable television packages for each of them in addition to cable internet would help explain the amount, but I will check it again thoroughly anyway.