MS Wireless Slow - How do i know if this is good or bad

Good Day,

I have a MS Wireless Router Kit, MN 820. My home network is XP to the router
via NIC card. Second PC is Win98 with a MN-730 PCI 802.11g card.

Before I purchased the MN-730, I had a MN510 USB 802.11b adapter, and
network access from my XP to my W 98 was slow, and by that I mean MUCH
slower then when I had a NIC card via a switch.

After I installed the MN-730 (quoted as being 5x faster then 802.11b) I was
depressed to see the performance was just as bad as with the MN510/802.11b
USB adapter. I de-installed all the software first, and then re-installed it
per MS instructions in the box.

My base station is set to use to run g mode, using channel 6, with broadcast
SSID enabled.

I used MMC (XP perofrmance monitor) to monitor the system, and selected my
XP's boxes Linksys Ethernet card's Total Bytes/Second. I then copied a bunch
of files across the local network to my W98 pc. Throughput was about 420,000
bytes per second.

Is 420 K slow ? 802.11 g should theoretically provide up to 54 Mpbs, thus I
am only running at about 10% capacity.

Could someone point me to the following please:
- How should I monitor network data flow ? Should I use MMC ?
- What could I reasonably expect for throughput?
- Are there any other settings that may be effecting my performance? network
protocols etc?

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction

Andre