Great, thanks to you all for the advice, I'll go for the Edimax, and hopefully won't need to come back to you with set-up problems!
Lisa

Personally I would have gone TP-link with an additional antenna - but the choice is yours.

Before forking out any cash - as advised elsewhere in this thread (about using inSSIDer) - look what channels neighbouring wireless devices are using and change your devices' channel (set via the router web interface) to the least populated.

There are 13 channels commonly in use (in Europe at least), however they overlap each other for the most part. Common wisdom is to use channels 1, 6 or 11 as they do not overlap each other. As the diagram and article here explains:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc783011%...

So basically - use inSSIDer to find which of those 3 channels is least used in your locality and change your router to use that channel.

You may find that cures your range problem.

I tend to find that 1, 5, 9 & 13 is a reasonable set when there are problems.

Hello, yes I did experiment with changing channels - this is what Virgin did over the phone when I first complained - but it doesn't really make much difference.

I have now bought and installed the Edimax, but am not sure what difference it is making. For example, the wireless network windows icon is telling me the signal strength is much better, and downstairs it is has increased to 54 mbps (whereas before it was very very low) however when I do speed tests on, I am getting very low speeds - under 5 meg??? (my service is supposed to be up to 30meg) I really don't understand the info. the wirelss network icon provides - or how signal strength etc.. inter-relates to the download speeds - when I asked Virgin they couldn't reall answer!

If when you connect via an ethernet cable the speedtests are giving sensible results then the issue will be the wireless.

54Mbps on the wireless icon, gives a maximum download speed of around 21 to 22Mbps. The 54 is both download and upload added together, then there are overhears.

Poor G wireless kit might only manage 15Mbps.