i'm really hoping that there is a 3rd party wireless connection manager, or even a wireless/wired connection manager, that i could use instead of windows xp sp2's default handling. i have found it very unconsistant, unstable, and buggy, and its very aggrivating. i use my wireless connection every day on my college campus, in my classes and out, and w/ windows, often it will connect to the wrong access point, or drop and the pick up a connection.

so, is there a 3rd party, or better yet, a open source alternative?

what about software on cd which is shipped with your wireless lan? what chipset is your wireless lan? if broadcom, then there is very nice softwate attached to the drivers. AFAIK most manufacturers adds their software with wireless cards they produce...

The Intel 2915 based minipci cards are cheap, support A/B/G, and have the nice Intel Proset manager.
They do a decent job on reception and connection too.

i have a centrino ibm laptop, that i connect to my college's lan. my ibm shipped w/ a connection manager, but it dosen't really suit my needs either; it is more suited to a user w/ a home wireless connection that connects to a specific access point. i on the other hand roam to different access points often, many times then even have different ssid's (i think that is what its called.)

IBM's Access Connections lets you set up multiple profiles for doing just that. It can even connect to a VPN automatically (which is great if your university requires it for access). I used AC all the time until I deleted Windows from my laptop a couple of days ago

are you implying you are on linux now? i would love to try linux out... does it connect to wireless networks well?

heh, that would be fun.

my TP T40, and my wife's T41 works perfectly with ubuntu, and wireless/ethernet.

Yep, my 5 GB linux root partition was running out of space... wireless works, but support for connecting to VPNs that use MPPE is still iffy (works *sometimes* but you can get dropped at any moment)