ask lj: computer network woes

So my shiny new laptop is very shiny and works beautifully, except for one thing -- it gets weird about the Internet sometimes.

There are three symptoms:

1. Not infrequently -- once or twice an evening, usually -- it drops the connection for some reason. This means that everything that requires the Internet (Firefox, AIM, Final Fantasy XI, etc), plus everything that require the local network (mapped drives, remote desktop, etc) all die at once. This can be fixed pretty quickly by repairing the connection, but it's annoying.
2. Also not infrequently (at least once and sometimes many times per evening), programs that involve streaming a lot of information over the Internet/network (primarily Final Fantasy XI and remote access to my desktop) will time out. No other Internet/network services are affected. This usually fixes itself between two and five minutes, allowing me to reconnect, without input from me, but is also annoying.
3. Sometimes, usually when coming out of hibernation or suspend, or more rarely while I'm actively using the computer, the connection will switch from 'local and Internet' to 'local access only.' This means that access over the local network is fine, but the Internet at large isn't available. Nothing seems to fix this besides rebooting my laptop, at which point it's fine.

Specs: It's a Dell laptop with Windows Vista Home Premium. The boy also has a Dell laptop (slightly different specs) with Windows Vista Home Premium, and he doesn't have these issues -- once in a while his connection drops, but not as often as mine, and the lag/timeout doesn't happen for him at all.

I have already disabled auto-tuning, which helped but not enough. I did the Microsoft Network Connectivity Testing thing, and it says that everything's working fine except Universal Plug and Play, which, I don't know whether that would be causing these symptoms or how to fix it if so. Otherwise, I'm puzzled, since the boy's laptop with very similar specs works just fine. I can't find anything in Event Log about it, either, although I suppose I might be looking for the wrong thing.

Anyone have any ideas what could be causing this kind of problem? Or an idea for a diagnostic I could use to figure it out? (It happens often enough that I could easily run a diagnostic until the problem appears, if that would help; I just don't know what to run.) It's really super annoying.

(Anyone who gives a response such as "Go back to XP" or "Switch to Linux" or "Switch to Mac" or whatever -- which are designed to make you feel superior rather than to help me -- will be roundly mocked and then soundly ignored.)

Recommended: Slacktivist

If you don't read Slacktivist, you probably should. In addition to a wonderful, thoughtful, and occasionally hilarious page-by-page takedown of the Left Behind series -- which is worth reading from the beginning in the archives, and what drew me to Slacktivist in the first place -- Fred Clark occasionally writes luminous pieces like this one:

Our Trespasses.

It's about immigration, and health care, and the Lord's Prayer, and grace, and fear, and forgiveness, and obligation. Quote:

There's this prayer we Christians say in church, at every service, whenever we get together. We recite it in unison, usually, and we've all got it memorized. We call it "The Lord's Prayer," because Jesus himself taught it to us and told us to pray it. Sometimes we call it the "Our Father," since that's how it starts.

Most of this prayer is comforting and reassuring, like the 23rd Psalm. "Give us this day our daily bread," we pray. "And deliver us from evil." Daily bread and deliverance, that's nice.

But then there's this other phrase which, when we listen to ourselves saying it, is the scariest part of any given Sunday. "Forgive us our trespasses," we pray, "as we forgive those who trespass against us."

That's disturbingly conditional. It's almost contractual. The conditions laid out there are crystal clear and explicit, but we tend to recoil from them. We pray this one prayer more than any other, but every other prayer omits this quid pro quo. "Forgive us according to thy infinite mercy," we pray, or "according to your boundless grace," or "for Jesus' sake," or "in Jesus' name." Straight-up, unconditional, one-way forgiveness is what we ask for in every other prayer. Apart from our recitation of that one prayer, you'll rarely ever hear us ask that this be conditional -- "Forgive us as we forgive others."

(Fred Clark is one of those people who gives me hope: he was raised Evangelical, is still Christian, and speaks of the issues of mainstream Christianity with intelligence, compassion, and justice. He tackles the hypocrisies and excesses of modern mainstream Christianity without losing his understanding and sympathy for the individual people involved -- and yet without softening what he has to say -- and he's smart and articulate while he does so.)

[local]

If one lives in Seattle and wants to purchase exotic meats -- by which I mean wild boar, venison, squab, partridge, quail, things like that; I don't need crocodile or anything -- where would one go to buy it? I can order online, and I will in absence of a local source, but I do like local where I can. (And if you know a good online merchant for this kind of thing, I'd take that recommendation too!)

(Yes, I could hunt most of those myself, if I were inclined. But I don't want to learn an entirely new hobby just because I want to cook with venison.)

EDIT: Oooooooh, this is the coolest suggestion I've heard for how to dispose of the large quantity of oil that results if you do your own frying. I'll have to see if Uwajimaya stocks it!