Wireless Card working poorly

[Yizbenlazzer]

So I bought a wireless adapter, the TP-Link TL-WN751ND, and I have my computer in the basement, a medium distance away from the router. It gets about one bar out of five, 16% signal strength, and averages 18 Mbps, and the internet drops out randomly (yes, power save mode is off). My laptop, however, has no problem right next to it at 54Mbps. I am searching for a budget solution to solve my slow internet speeds. I am thinking one of a few options, and could you all please tell me which would be best?

1) Get a new network card. I could buy a slightly more expensive card, and hope that my current one is just not good enough to support wireless from that distance.

2) Move the computer near the router. This I know would work but would be really inconvenient as there is no room near the router, or in any of the rooms nearby

3) Run an Ethernet cable. It would have to go down a hallway about 20 feet, down the stairs, about another 10 feet, then turn the corner and go another 30 feet to the computer desk, and it would run through some high traffic hallways.

4) Get a wireless range repeater. I would have to find some place in the middle for this, and I don't think these are cheap.

What is my best option?

 

[HillBillyAsian]

well if you have a old router laying around that can support ddwrt then you can go that route and turn that old router into a repeater, you can also check out ethernet over power too, is it a usb adapter that you have or is it a pci-pcie card with antennas? maybe slightly higher gain antennas will do the trick?

 

[Yizbenlazzer]

well if you have a old router laying around that can support ddwrt then you can go that route and turn that old router into a repeater, you can also check out ethernet over power too, is it a usb adapter that you have or is it a pci-pcie card with antennas? maybe slightly higher gain antennas will do the trick?

It's a PCI-E card, with an antenna, and I have a really old computer lying around, could I use that?

 

[HillBillyAsian]

sounds like you might just need a bit more power on your side considering your laptop works fine. try
http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=105&cp_id=10521&cs_id=1052105&p_id=8748&seq=1&format=2
its cheap, its stronger, and it has a realistic 2x gain over the stock antenna that you have.