I just bought my first computer, a Dell Inspiron, for college. I am very interested in getting a notebook card adapter and a router for my dorm room LAN jack. I already asked my school if it was okay and they said they don't have a problem with it unless it ends up interfering with others.

1) I can only afford the stuff in the 2.4GHz-band and since most modern cordless telephones these days are in the same range, do I run a risk?

2) I hope that I just hook up the DSL/broadband router to my school LAN wall jack, stick the PC-card in the slot and do the usual installation procedures and I am good to go. However I wonder how the router 'locates' me, does the router need a desktop to run?

3a) Since the school line is higher than cable, I honestly couldn't less care for certain max speeds available via wi-fi networks, just range. (In case my roommate's a dick and I'd want to be able to walk away and not hinder my school productivity.) How far can I go with a wireless system that uses the IEEE 802.11b protocol standard and are all routers/cards with this standard have the same range?

(BTW, my room window points into the campus, so I am only interested in Line-of-Sight range)

3b) Does these newer high-speed 22/54Mbps rates for the "b" standard allow for increased range as the regular ones are 11Mbps?

3c) Are these standards automatically Wi-Fi certified or do they have to say it?

4) I am deciding between a NETGEAR solution and a Microsoft wireless networking solution, but neither tells me a max range; I am going to school in 2 weeks and have a max of $160 to spend, any ideas?