Wireless data transfer between 2 macs

Hey guys,

So I just got a new iMac and have connected it to the same network as my powerbook. iStumbler says my network signal is 70% (fairly okay) and Noise is 9-11%, pretty good.

However, I want to transfer a folder's with about 1.64 GB data in it from one computer to the other. When I start it up it says it'll take about an hour - is that a reasonable data rate is something going on?

Activity monitor states Data Received/sec (on the mac receving the data) is around 500kb/s falling as low as 290 and climbing as high as 860.

Is that the expected transfer rate? Can anyone offer any advice regarding wirless networks (bar pointing the antenna, moving it away from other wirless sources and tvs etc, changing the channel - i've done what i think is the most obvious stuff).

I guess if i zipped the data first and then sent it it'd be quicker as its just 1 file rather than a folder with many many files..?

Thanks in advance.