Virgin media 50meg service UK

Hi all,

I have the 50 meg broadband account with Virgin, but can't get up to speed.

A technician came round yesterday to sort it out.

I managed to get 50 meg on my laptop when plugged straight into the ethernet, but when on the wireless system I was on about 22 meg - so less than half the speed.

The technician said that as my laptop is over six months old my internal wireless card will be 'g' and that unless I have an 'n' card I will never be able to get 50 meg.

He had a very new HP laptop with him and managed to get 45 meg on our wireless connection.

He also said that in very old houses with lots of steel, such as those found in London's Kensington and Chelsea, Virgin advise customers to purchase a Linksys router (one of the ones that you plug in separately from the modem, possibly in another room) as they would only be able to get 50 meg using this kind of router.

How easy is it to change the internal wireless card from g to n and how much would it cost?

Is what he is saying even true?

I'm using a 2006 macbook laptop on OSX 10.4.11. It has intel processing.

The modem is a D-Link Ambit Model no: E08C015.01

The wireless router is a D-Link DIR 615.

Thanks
EP

ps I get muddled as to the difference between a modem and a router, so apologies if I have confused the two in my post above.