If your computer is not rated for "N", having the "N" router will make no difference. You will just have to try in different locations to see where you get the best signal. My "G" router is on the second floor, and I can connect on the first floor with no problem. No basement, so I don't know about that.

Hawking´s Hi-Gain Technology is the culmination of years of research and development in extending wireless range and improving WiFi performance. See link.

Here is a link that might be useful: Hawking´s

I have a one story house but it is over 4000 sqft and very spread out, I have great signal strength through out the house, I thought this would be a good opportunity for me to see just how mine rates. I took my netbook and walked from one end of the house to the other and never changed off of the full 5 bars, I have over 3/4 acer so I went out in my back yard and closed the door, still stayed at 5 bars, when I got to the far back corner it was at 4 bars (flickered to 3 a couple of times), in the front yard I had to get to the street for it to go to 4 bars. My router is located on one side of the house in about the center. So I am quite happy with that test. I thought it would drop more bars than that when I went outside.
I talked to my next door neighbor the other day, I can see his router in my list and I show him at 2 bars from in my house, I asked him if he had seen mine pop up recently and he said yes but he did not know it was me, he said he is seeing me at his house at between 3 and 4 bars depending on our weather I would guess. I did not ask him what kind of router he has.

again raven...you are an N or G? AND if the laptop is not rated for N does that lessen the N feature of having greater range or just negates any speed gains?

I have the wireless G linksys WRT54GS2 one of my laptops could do N one G but as they are back wards compatible it really does not matter. Since I have not tried any of the N routers I really can not reply from any personal experience. I don't know how much better it could get me than what I have though.

I wi ll stick with the G and see what happens...thanks!

it worked! It did prompt me once for a security key and now my lap top auto connects each time its turned on. I assume no one else can get in unless they know that pw. My brother mentioned that there was some sort of address in the laptop that I could program into the router sort of telling the router that only certain devices can connect...whether they know the pw or not...I'd like to set that up.....if anyone knows how....

that is mac address filtering, if you have set up WPA2 on your security you should not have to worry about it. What mac filtering does is you get the mac address off of each pc that will be accessing the router and in the router settings you enter the specific mac address into the area for mac addresses. When you do that the absolute only thing that can gain access is what ever pc has a mac address that matches the one in the router. But if you have someone come over and visit and they want to use your wireless while they are there instead of just giving them your access password you have to get their mac address go into your router and put it in there. I have done both ways but my new one is on WPA2. As you saw once you put the password in once it will then recognize that pc and not ask it for the password again but each new pc or laptop that accesses it for the first time will have to enter the password which is why I always suggest taping it to the bottom of the router.
Mac address filtering used to be used as an added layer of protection however it has gotten much easier for the bad guys to hack mac addresses unfortunately.

to find out more just go to google and look up Mac address filtering.