router questions - best brand? Will it work in my home?

I'm interested in a router to enable wireless connection. Already been recommended Netgear 834G and reviews of it on the net seem pretty good. Anyone else have any opinions on which wireless router is best?

The computer connecting wireless will be in a spare room. I know from reviews if there are more than 3 walls in the way it won't work at all.

Does the alignment of the router with doorways matter?

The reason I ask is because there are three walls between the internet/phone socket. Between my bedroom and the spare room there is a bathroom, thus creating a 3 wall barrier. But I can open a doorway that leads from my bedroom (where the phone socket is) to the bathroom, then open the other door on the other side of the bathroom (which faces and directly aligns with the door to the spare room) which I can also open. The doorway on the far side of the bathroom (furthest from my bedroom) aligns with the spare room door but the doorway into the bathroom from my bedroom does not align with the door on the other side of the bathroom. But during winter I need to keep warm so the door from my bedroom to the bathroom would be closed, while the other doors (other bathroom door and spare room door could be left open).

To cut a long story short, if alignment of router with doorways DOES matter then there would be 3 walls between my router and the PC downloading in the spare room and netgear router drops to 26% efficiency in this case. If alignment of router with doorway DOESN'T matter then there would only be one, or in some cases no wall.

If alignment of router with doorways DOES matter then would it be worth doing this with the downloading only being 26% efficient on the PC in spare room?

Thanks

Any advice appreciated!

in this case i think a booster would do the trick

buy a linksys wrt54g for $10-15 on ebay, load the dd-wrt firmware on it. increase transmit power to around 75mw, and enjoy wireless goodness throughout the house...

or, just get repeaters

I live in a townhome that is two stories with a basement. My server is in the basement and I had an old Microsoft Wireless Router. I could not get access on the top floor. I bought one of the Linksys wrt54g and then bought bigger antennae's for it. I think they are 7db or something like that and I have absolutely have no issues with wireless connectivity. My neighbors probably don't either

yeah go with linksys routers...netgear ones ususally have a lot of signal problems