Thanks all. I really appreciate your input. I'm leaning towards the Belkin N600 Wireless Dual Band router. I currently own a Belkin and have never had any trouble with it, so figure I'll stick with what I'm happy with. The downside is all of the reviews without fail mention how bad tech support is no matter what brand you get. I wonder when companies are going to wise up and realize that is one reason folks don't buy their equipment.

I dont want to give you a headache.. I assume you've used wifi before and understand the ssid and passphrase stuff ? And are actually connected to the router wirelessly ? ... In your browser you can type in the routers ip address and get to the login page? And there's no security configured in the router that would block your connection to the internet ? The reason I ask is usually a linksys or other install will set defaults such that the TCP/ip will automatically get assigned an IP and pointed at DNS from the router. You really shouldnt have to configure it. But ... let me think outloud as I click ,,, if i go to Control Panel and double click Network Connections... I see my wireless adapter! Then if I highlight it and Right Click, choose Properties .. it opens a little window with a scroll section .. and then I scroll down to the one that says Internet Protocol (TCP/ip) Highlight that ... then push the properties button in that window... vwalla,,, how do you spell that... vuwalla. You probably just want to tick the Automatic rather than manually configure all those ip numbers... like mine is.... if we're on the same mind path

zep et. al.: Sorry I didn't get back sooner but with my limited experience, I was a little leary of doing the uninstall of network adapter. However I finally realized that at worst it would only mess up the laptop and not the other devices that are connected and working on the secured network. So: I just uninstalled and rebooted. The adapter did reinstall but I am still not getting a proper connection although things have slightly changed. The secured network got connected, but did not even ask for the security password and simply went to 'validating identity' and simply hung. It didn't even time out. I checked firefox to see if it was expecting a password there, as was the initial case to get connected to the Guest Network (where I am again now), but it couldn't find the server. You may recall, that previously the issue was that the secured net would ask for the password, but find it unacceptable and give 'limited or no connectivity. Is there a way to force the network to ask for the password?? Any other ideas? Eventually, I will probably find a way to get a knowledgeable person out to my house where they could diagnose this. FYI, I am creating another post about security updates that may tangentially be connected to this thread. I apparently successfully installed sp3 but 'security update' keeps wanting to install it AGAIN! I was worried I might not be able to shut down to reload the adapter, but I was able to cancel the update.

for routers I stick with liksys the only other one I used was a dlink and it was the one that was provided when I had verizon fios, all that I buy are linksys/cisco. If you already have an N router what are you wanting to upgrade? I found this to be a really good article on routers How to Buy a Wireless Router