Please help this is very frustrating

Okay, our family recently got hooked up with Qwest DSL. We have a 2wire gateway that is centrally located in our house that sends out a wireless signal and also has a USB hookup and a few ethernet ports. We have two laptops that receive the signal wirelessly perfectly almost anywhere in the house. Here's where the problem comes in. I purchased a Wireless PCI card for a desktop that is a few rooms away from the gateway. It is a Zonet that I got for around 15 dollars from Tigerdirect.com, and it has a 2dbi attached. I'm not sure if there's much more one would need to know about it, I'm kinda new to wireless, but it is here < Zonet ZEW1602 PCI Wireless Adapter - 54Mbps, 802.11g at TigerDirect.com >. The card can't get more than one or two signal bars at most, sometimes not getting any at all, and I figured this would be because of the antenna so I also recently purchased a Rosewill 8dbi antenna to try and fix the whole situation from Newegg.com. I hooked it up expecting it to give me an astounding 5 bars, but was let down. It didn't raise the signal at all, staying at the same 2 or less signal bars. Now I'm thinking either the cheap card or the cheap antenna (both were under 15 dollars a piece) must be the problem, but I'm not sure which card or antenna to purchase to fix the problem... Any help would be much appreciated!

From my personal experience, 2 WIRE routers don't give the best signal, and you cant enhance it with store bought antennas

Well, most likely, it is ether a bad card or a cheap antenna, which one, I don't know. This is a little more costly than what you have, but it will serve you much better than what you have now for sure. This is the combination I use in my backup computer (both bought from frys):

PCI adapter:::
FRYS.com*|*D-Link

Antenna:::
FRYS.com*|*Airlink

The D-link adapter is a little more expensive than your current card, but is worth the extra money, especailly if your trying to avoid the problem your having now... and D-link tends to be a little more reliable, in my opinion.

The antenna from Airlink101 is a 10 dBi, omni directional antenna. I get 5 bars all the time, through 4 dry walls, 50 feet away. Just don't buy other airlink products. Again from personal experience, they tend to not work right. This antenna though, does work, very well.

Also I must add, I must be getting all five bars because I am using a D-link DGL-4300 gaming router. It gives me 5 bars on all my comps, including a comp that is even further than 50 feet away. So what I'm trying to say, is that you may need to buy a better router, if the new PCI adapter or Antenna don't work for you. So if you ever think about buying another router, I very highly recommend the D-link DGL-4300. Even if your not a gamer (that i know of), you will see a drastic improvement in signal strength and coverage.

The only other router or adapter that will give you better speed and coverage is a wireless N product. D-link, I again, recommend for the job. But I would wait for a couple of years before getting wireless N products, they are only draft.

I don't know if any of this helped you, but I hope it did

Borgslayer