[BAWUG] new wireless user with a technical problem

[Laura Lockwood]

Hi -- we recently purchased a Netgear wireless router to set up our home wireless network.  The router and PCMCIA cards seem to work well on an older Dell Latitude laptop computer but not on my brand new Dell Insprion laptop.  The older laptop has windows 98, while the newer one has windows xp.  It also has Macafee personal firewall software.  The technical support person at Dell suggested turning off all of my firewalls, but somehow I don't want to "go naked" as this laptop has my financial records on it.    The problem with my laptop is that I can't seem to keep the signal strength going for more than a few minutes...I'm frequently getting disconnected, which is frustrating while I'm on the internet, emailing, etc.  Any suggestions?  Is it XP?  The laptop power management system?  The firewalls?