[REVISED] My wireless card...

[Newby]

...regardless of operating system or laptop, seems to have issues. Lately, it seems packets will build up send/recv wise and I have to ping something to get them to all go through. However, rRandomly it will just die (I have to eject it) so I'm not sure what to do. It also has issues with range. I only get two bars in my room, and my friend (who has onboard wireless G) got four bars. The bars don't seem to matter much, though. And when it gets freaky and I try to manually disable it in Windows, it just sits there... "Disabling the wireless network adapter."

Is it a problem with my card? (Linksys WPC55AG PCMCIA card) I'm guessing it is. Should I get a new card? If so, recommendations? Preferably with an Atheros chipset and the ability to do 802.11A/B/G (my dad does 802.11a) and WPA1/2. 802.11g with WPA is just fine, though; A isn't totally necesssary

None of my solutions want to work! :(