[Hampshire] USB Wifi Dongle - Recommendations Sought

Hi Everyone,

I have just set up a mini-itx machine at my mother-in-law's and am
getting good connectivity with the Linksys PCI wifi card.

However, I am getting pretty poor performance out of the on-board
graphics and would like to use the single PCI slot for a PCI graphics
card to take a load off the processor and give me better
performance/resolutions on the 21" Iiyama CRT I have here.

In order to free up the PCI slot I will need to get hold of a USB wifi
dongle, as ethernet is sadly not an option. Steve Davies recently
flogged me a Netgear device which worked, but was prone to keeling over
on a frequent basis, both with the Ubuntu-supplied driver and
alternative ndiswrapper/Netgear drivers. A quick google aimed at fixing
that issue revealed that the range was generally considered to be poor
on these devices too - hence the subsequent switch to a PCI device.
Steve, as is usual, had let the Netgear device go at a bargain price, so
no great loss and certainly no complaints from me there (I have since
passed it on to a Windows user with less exacting requirements).

Anyway, to the point: can anyone recommend a specific* and reasonably
current USB wifi dongle that plays nice with recent versions of Ubuntu?

Cheers,

Sean

* I am nervous of general recommendations of brand/model based on bad
experience of different chipsets within (supposedly) the same product,
so <brand> <model> <version> plus any hints on which drivers work best
would be ideal!