I need some help.

My home is such that all my broadband to myPCs has to be wireless (the
only place they could connect the cable was in an obscure, upstairs
bedroom).

In general this has worked just fine. I have 3 PCs currently connected
to the network, One desktop and a laptop running XP and my new
laptop running Vista (new is relative, I've been having this problem
since January 2009 when I got the Vista laptop).

The two XP machines connect to the network just fine. Occasionally,
when I work on the desktop, I'd see a notification icon that it has
connected to the network, but in general I have no interruptions to my
network connections.

The Vista machine (Vista Ultimate, SP 2) is a nightmare. the WiFI
connection keeps dropping. Additionally, often it would report that
the network is connected, but in reality, nothing is reachable and I
have to disconnect/connect to the network before any Internet site is
reachable.

Now there are 3 components that I suspect:
1. The wireless card (Intel 5300AGN)
2. Vista itself
3. Something about my network setup

If it was external, I would expect to see the other SP machines also
suffer connection problems. If this is not a valid assumption, please
disabuse me of that incorrect notion.

What I do see, and completely don't understand is the information in
the notification area for the network icon.

Sometimes my network is displayed as bluegrass Access: Local and
Internet ("bluegrass" is my network name), other times the network
is displayed as

Identifying (bluegrass) access: Local and Internet

and still other times it is displayed as

Unidentified network (bluegrass) Access: Local and Internet

A few times even the network displayed as

bluegrass 2: Access Local and Internet

None of this is displayed in my Windows XP machines

Who/what is responsible for identifying the network, what role does
that play in access to the network and how can I go about
troubleshooting this issue?

I'm planning to migrate wo Win 7 purely as a result of this issue, but
I guess I may commit a heinous act if it turns out that the problem
was in the hardware of my machine and migrating does not resolve this
issue.