Home and School Wireless Networking

If someone's posted this exact question before, please point me to it... I looked but didn't find one. I know how peeps hate repeat questions. Assuming you're still reading...

Okay, so I've got two problems but can solve them all with one round of questions. My parents are finally getting a Cable modem (Comcast service in Chicago area but we're buying our own cable modem) so I'm going to set up a wireless network in my house. I'm also living in a house with 7 other guys next year at school and we've decided that wireless is probably the best way to go (again Comcast cable...buying our own modem). I figure the home network will be just like with school one but with 4 less computers (4 at home, 8 at school).

I'll post what I think, and hopefully someone can tell me if I'm right.

1. Buy a cable modem (renting is not worth it long run).

2. Buy a wireless router. This should be 802.11G right?
- We're going to have 8 computers.
- They will be spread all over a 3-story, 3000sq. foot house we're renting.
- 2 on the same floor as the router, 3 above and 3 below.
- Do I need to buy a different (STRONGER) or otherwise different kind of router?
- I'm under the belief that (bandwidth allowing) I can have up to 255 computers connected to my network so 8 shouldnt be a problem.

3. Buy wireless cards. Obviously this will be a "B" or "G" depending on what I'm told to get for the router.

4. Some of us have Win2k, others have XP Home Edition, others have XP Professional. I assume these will all work without any configuration. If some is necessary I've got good tech help close by (yay for computer science friends!), but I just want to make sure I have all the physical hardware correct.

5. http://192.168.1.1/ is the address for the router. I assume somehow I set up the computers to be 192.168.1.* where * is 2-255 for the computers.

6. I realize that while all 8 people are online at the same time the speeds won't be super fast, but it should still work right?

7. Am I missing anything here besides security? I'll worry about that later, and we don't really give a shit if someone tries to leech our bandwidth from our backyard - we'll be bigger and stronger than anyone with brains enough to try that. When transmitting credit card info we promise all the security freaks out there that we'll look outside for shady characters huddled with a laptop!