The contradiction with AirPort performance

Ok, help me understand this one...
From my bed, I can see more wireless networks than ever before - more than my wife's PB G4 12" or my old PB G4 15", but I get worse overall signal strength to my own base stations.
What used to be a solid 3 bars from the living room base station location to the bedroom is now all over the place - sometimes one bar sometimes three bars, and when it hits one bar sometimes the network drops and there is delay in connecting.
These two pieces of information seem contradictory.

I think the variations in signal levels may be due to the differences in the Airport antennas. The PowerBook antennas are oriented vertically in the display and are therefore fairly omnidirectional in nature. The antenna in the MacBook Pro is mounted in the hinge of the display and while intended to be omnidirectional probably behaves somewhat more directional as a result of its horizontal orientation. As the orientation of the antenna changes by a few degrees, the signal level may fluctuate a bit.
I would see if hooking an antenna to the base station helps a bit.

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