[citation][nom]knickle[/nom]You're forgetting something. The reason your cell phone will work for miles is not because of the power output of the phone, it's because of the Cell tower. If your wireless router had a massive antenna attached the top of a building with a powerful transmitter, you would be able to take your laptop miles away and connect to it without an issue. Trust me on this.As goofy as this sounds, I recommend that some of you seek out the training manual for obtaining a HAM radio license. You will find tons of info that will explain how RF technology actually works. I did this back in the early 90s because a few friends were doing it and took the test to get a license (and passed).The bottom line, get yourself educated. Learn from the text book, not the media or some backward blog.[/citation]
You're actually sort of entirely wrong. All of these things we are discussing are TWO way communications. Both ends of the connection need to be able to send AND receive traffic. While it is true that increasing gain can do wonders, beefing up one end of the connection will only get you so far. Amplifiers actually do even less for you than higher gain antennas, since they do nothing to increase that same side's sensitivity to the still weak other end.
Besides the high gain tower side, and any amps they have on that end, the frequencies used for cell phones are much lower than the 2.4ghz used for wifi, and they penetrate far better than wifi. Also, the cell ranges are licensed by the FCC (in the US), and interference can be better controlled. The 2.4 that runs wifi is not registered and the noise level is monstrous.
If you did that with you laptop...it would see the access point from miles away...but it would be unable to return any traffic due to low gain, low power level, and the scattering tendencies of waves that short.
Please don't try to school a guy who assisted with wISP deployments for ISPs with thousands of customers for three years.
Saying a laptop could reach that far is ridiculous