Yes, Bob is correct. All prebuilt retail notebooks coming out now have the Intel 2200 b/g or equivalent.
You may not be able to actually benefit from the full 54G speed but the connection speed and quality (less drops of the DSL or cable modem connection) will be much better.
That is rotten the Compaq/HP notebooks have this as the default as it should be the Intel 2200 and as you say it is actually $1 less.
Make sure you check the wi-fi router website for your brand for firmware updates as this will improve performance.
You have a new machine, so this should not be an issue, but there was a wi-fi bios update and the Intel proset utility update around 4/04 on the Compaq website -- if you can not view all updates using your model use the X1370US model to see all the updates.
Make sure you have at least system bios F42 -- you should have this now if you ordered custom.
Note -- Starting with bios F42, you cannot switch to another non-supported brand of minipci wi-fi (that is the card in your notebook). So, some are going back to F34 bios that had the 2100 card or that are using another brand (like Cisco, etc) for whatever reason.
But you should be fine with your 54g card and it should work fine with all brands of wi-fi routers (speeds at higher than 54g like the 108mps D-link Atheros chipset require the router and the card to be the same brand.
Note, also set your router options to run at 54G only unless you have another device that is running at a lower speed. This will give it the maximum speed and stability as you cannot run two devices at different speeds at once --the system will default to the lower speed if there are more than 1.
You can also read some wi-fi threads at www.x1000forums.com
Some guy is trying to figure out how to attach an external antenna to the internal card but if you are going through all that trouble use an external wi-fi PCcard.
But if you have the router set up properly you should be fine.
I am running my laptop downstairs and the D-link router is upstairs and I have not needed to reboot the DSL modem (lost connection) since downloading the bios and Intel proset program from Compaq and updating the D-link firmware bios.