I am about to leave my present apartment in North Pattaya which supplies free interenet (wireless) access through TP-LINK at 54 Mbps. The area that I am moving into is located in the vicinity of Pattaya Nua Rd and Pattaya 3rd Rd. (In my present area I am able to connect with 3 other providers for free).

I have taken my laptop to the townhouse that we will be moving to this Thursday 11th Jan and can pick up 2 ISP that are in range (Pattaya WiFi and Linksys) but there signals are weak.

I am new to wireless technology. There is a phone line provided in the new location.

My question is this; which is the best way for me to go?

You're confusing two things here.

What you are connecting to is just a wireless accesspoint, just like you can buy in any computershop.

You apartment will subscribe to an internet package from any of the ISP's, and then use the TP-link equipment to distribute it throughout the apartment building.

So in your old apartment they use equipment from TP-link. The 54 Mbps you see is just the speed your wireless card (built into your laptop) can connect to that accesspoint, and not the speed of the internet!

What you are seeing in your new townhouse looks to be one private accesspoint, probably one of your neighbors having a wireless network in their house, with equipment from the Linksys brand.

The other accesspoint you see (Pattaya Wifi) is I think owned by a company installing the equipment in commercial places. If I recall correctly the (free) wifi internet access in Shenanigans is supplied by Pattaya wifi.

Normally the private owned accesspoint (linksys) should be encrypted, meaning you can see it but not connect to it without having the correct key.

The other wifi point probably will allow you to connect, but will reroute you to a webpage where you have to enter a username and password before you can access pages on the internet.

Basically, if you want to play it straight (meaning not stealing internet access paid for by others) you'd have to get adsl installed in the townhouse and buy a wifi enabled adsl router. Then you'll have access to your internet wirelessly throughout your house. Just remeber to enable the built in encryption to keep others using your internet you are paying for!

Cheers