Mike Humphrey wrote:

There are 5 people in the house using laptops,
so WiFi is more or less essential.

You don't need to use the onboard wifi, though - you could disable it
and use a separate access point, or use both if they're on different
channels.

That's what I do in Ireland.
I probably will do it here (in Italy) in the end,
if ever the ADSL connection is repaired.
(I do have one desktop computer connected to the modem by ethernet;
but that goes off when the connection drops,
even though the Ethernet and ADSL lights on the modem remain on (green).

--
Timothy Murphy
e-mail: gayleard /at/ eircom.net
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland