Pinging in Counter-Strike Question
 

Yesterday I realized, when I join my server on my laptop, I ping around 10ms LOWER, then I do on my PC. My CS server is located in Dallas, Texas, and on my laptop I ping around 25-29. On my PC, I ping around 39-45. Could anyone know what could be causing this?? My PC specs are, AMD Athlon 64 3000+, 1GB PC3200, 240GB, my laptop is only 2.2Ghz, 512MB PC2100, 40GB. Both are pretty freshly installed XP copies, so there hasn't really been any registry editing, or anything like that. :|

Alot of things could cause it but one of the easy things to check is join you server and in you console (` by default) type rate. If you have never changed it, it will probably say 2500 which is not good. If you are on a good cable connection type rate 25000, slower cable or dsl type rate 15000 or so... there also is cl_updaterate (default is 20 i think) and cl_cmdrate (default is 35 i think). If you are on a really solid connection you could try this:
rate 25000
cl_updaterate 100
cl_cmdrate 101

Might help, might make things worse, it really depends on your connection. Just remember the defaults so if things go wrong you can switch it back.

You using one computer wireless and the other with copper?

Ah yes, I forgot to mention that, both laptop, and PC, are using rate 20000, cl_updaterate 101, cl_cmdrate 101, and are both wired. :)

and I'm on a 3mbps connection.

maybe you could try copying the .cfg files so the settings are the same

spyware or something might cause a higher ping if all the settings are the same.

I've never seen the rate changes before mentioned, what exaactly does that do?

They all do different things.
cl_updaterate is how many updates are requested from the server per second.
cl_cmdrate is how many updates are sent to the server per second.
rate limits the download.
cl_rate limits the upload.