You are correct. Linksys has gone to a more WAF friendly approach. I see them in livingrooms and dens all the time now.
I had to do what you did with my old WRT 54 linksys and even then the signal was still poor in a few parts of the house. I even tried it with an upgraded antenna on the PCI card in the PC and it still wasn't that much better. That was what prompted me to get the WRT 300N with it's MIMO technology, it's signal was quite strong everywhere in the house. My 310N has almost as good a signal as the 300, so IMO the internal antennas are equally as good as the boosted signal versions.
