How powerful is the Airport Extreme wifi card?

I was surprised at how many more wireless networks my friend's HP laptop was able to pick up from exactly the same spot in our flat in comparison to my iBook, and that the HP laptop had consistently stronger signals from the networks that I could connect to.
Is the Airport Extreme fairly underpowered in comparison to other wifi cards?

I used no tool - the comparison was entirely
subjective (ie the relative visual 'signal strength'
scale shown by each system's wireless network tools.
My friend's HP could consistently see 2, sometimes 3
more networks than my iBook.
The HP is also an 802.11g card.
Good, you're comparing cards that may be compared.
I am pretty sure the antenna is firmly plugged.
Good.
As a general comment - the signal to my wireless
router is strong and solid - this is not impacting on
my system use at all, but I was interested to see the
differences!
The values displayed by different softwares on different
systems can't be easily compared. Some use logarithmic
scales when others use linear ones.
Many wireless drivers display network names even when
they receive a usable signal for a few seconds.
This isn't a proof of performance in real use.
You may receive a frame out of 5 from an interfering
network, and your software may decide to display this
network name.
I advise you to perform an analysis of your wireless
neighborhood with a tool like iStumbler.
iStumbler will clearly show you if you have really
usable networks, a poor signal level network or
interfering networks.
dan    

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