will current 802.11g hardware get better?

im new to wifi and am looking to build a wireless network, from what i have read on the internet the current crop of 802.11g hardware doesnt preform anywhere nears its full potenial. With the release of firmware and the like will it be possiable for the current hardware to reach its potenial? or to take full advantage of the increase in speeds 802.11g will eventually offer will i need new hardware? also which standard will offer the greatest range? 802.11b or 802.11g?

thank you

I thought it was just a case of raw bandwidth vs usable IP bandwidth, in which case 802.11g is no worse than 802.11b.

You're lucky to get 2mbs on a "11mbs" 11b net and you're lucky to get 10mbs on a "54mbs" 11g net. Though I haven't done any speed tests.

Seton and myself get around 4Mbits/s (half a Megabyte) connection between us on 11b and the guy that connects to me gets around 300Kbytes connection to me on my 11g AP but i beleve he is only useing an 11b card

I'm going from a Linksys WAP54G and a proxim abg card and I'm getting 1600KB/s and 2000KB/s over www and ftp.

I have installed as a work project 2 DWL900ap+ access points.
They are 1.1km apart in the city and it is a 19dB->19dB link.
The APs are in bridge mode and I get between 4 and 5Mbit.
The received signal at the remote end is -30dBm.

Hopefully this will give you some idea of speed vs distance vs 802.11b

I accidentally ping'd the remote ap overnight last night, and out of 30,600 odd ping requests, only 18 were lost - reliable connection if you ask me.

-John