Do they help a lot? I had wireless installed and the guy put the router in the garage because that's what was easiest. It's 20' and a couple walls away from where I use my laptop. I still get lousy response from the laptop and was wondering if a direct connection with Ethernet cable would help much. Any experience??? (My laptop is 10 yrs old too)

Gary. I dont have experience in that exact situation, BUT a direct connection should be faster as there is no chance for lost or weak signal.

Cable is better but if you don't want to run cable, a wifi booster between you and the router will do the job.

If you want to know if it will help, carry your laptop to the router and connect directly to it with a short cable. It may be your laptop, not the connection.

Or you can add a 5G wifi USB to your laptop as the 5g can blow through the walls. Most older laptops only recieve on the slower bands.

Pretty much all routers broadcast on the 5G side now

That is what we did. We had wireless in the house but ZERO signal into the garage. We bought a wireless booster for $20 and I have full signal now in the garage,

Yes ethernet cable will help alot.

You have two options really.
1) cable from there to your laptop like your thinking.
2) cable from there to another router in your house so you WIFI works better in the house.

I'm currently doing #2 for the exact same reasons as you but I'm connecting multple tv's and computers so WIFI is necessary for me.

Pulling off #2 though might be more technical than you can handle though. Just FYI in that case.

Yes.

Maybe

it depends very much on the hardware you are using.

before you spend any money have your laptop in it's normal location

each provider typically has a speed test like this https://www.spectrum.com/internet/speedtest-only

run the speed test get a base line of you connection from your usual location.

then move the lap top to within a few feet of the router and re-test.

say you have 7mbps (mega bytes per second) internet you may very well get 7 in both locations

basic wireless is 11 mbps so you gain nothing if you already have 7mbps in both locations your usual place and next to the router

there is faster Gigabyte wireless also

yes you loose signal strength and give up speed with distance 20 feet and few non metal walls isn't typically a lot for a good wireless router.

Ethernet comes in 3 basic speeds 10mbps this has been around for 25 years 100mbps been around about 15 years and Gig or Gigabyte per second as in 1000mbps.

so 10 , 100 and 1000 mbps

as an example I have 60mbps internet so having a gigabyte network does me no good for internet and my one network printer just isn't that demanding so I save some money and keep buying the 100mbps router as I go through them every few years. they are talking about offering 200mbps internet in the future for my area if that happens I will upgrade to gig

stuff I work on at work most of it is a gig because there is a different kind of data demand for it.

before you spend the time and money running a cable , you likely already have a short one that came with something if not they are inexpensive for a 6 or 8 foot cable plug in directly in the garage where the router is and run the speed test. does it change?