[ltp] Wifi range: Cisco Aironet 350 vs IBM a/b/g combo

[linux-thinkpad@linux-thinkpad.org]

I recently replaced my miniPCI card in my T40: it was shipped with
the 802.11b Cisco Aironet 350, but I wanted to try 802.11g, so bought
the IBM a/b/g combo miniPCI cards.  After faithfully following the
instructions and movies on IBM's website, I successfully replaced the
card and reattached the two antennae via those fiddly little plugs,
but am finding the range *greatly* reduced compared to the Cisco, and
compared to a PCMCIA Orinoco card.

I'd been led to believe it might be less, but this is extremely
noticeable: so much that I'm thinking of checking the antennae
connections, but I'm not sure how, and read somewhere they're only
guaranteed for something like 3 reattachments so don't want to fiddle
hopelessly with it.

Has anyone else made this swap and can compare these two cards?  I
ran the Cisco with both the mpi350 module and Fabrice Bellet's
superior aironet module, and I'm running the IBM card with madwifi
CVS.  Or: can anyone tell me a software way I can check whether the
antennae are connected ok?  

Secondly, even though the IBM card's connecting as a G card to my
Linksys WRT54G router (proven by it still working when the router's
in "G-Only" mode and all nearby B clients turned off), and iwconfig
reports 54 or 48Mb/s, I can only get a pretty consistent maximum of
7Mb/s when uploading a file to a server on my network.  iwlist rate
reports that rates from 1Mb/s to 18Mb/s are available, and that I'm
connected at 48Mb/s right now :)  Can someone make some sense of this
for me?