I have a thinkpad x61s and the network card does not work super well, especially on Linux: it takes a long time to authenticate on wpa/wpa2 protected networks and the connection drops frequently.

Based on this post and other reviews, I bought a ASUS N13 usb adapter. The range, the authentication speed, and the connection speed is better than my laptop built-in card. It worked immediately on Windows 7 (Windows downloaded the driver automatically), but it took some fiddling to install it on archlinux.

Essentially, the card works with the RT2870sta chipset driver which conflicts with other drivers. The trick is to disable these conflicting drivers/modules in /etc/rc.conf:

MODULES=( ... !rt2800usb !rt2x00usb !rt2x00lib ... )