Wireless doesn't work on new Toshiba laptop

[Jerry Lapham]

On Sunday I picked up one of the Walmart special $348 Toshiba Satellite 17 
inch laptops (Laptop2) and was unable to connect wireless under Win Vista .  I 
installed Kubuntu 9.04 and eventually got network-manager to connect 
intermittently, but not for long.  I was never able to actually get a web 
page to load.  I couldn't even ping.

Yesterday evening I installed wicd on Laptop2 and I think I see the problem.  
The "Connected to jerry at ..." rate varies rapidly between 100% and 0% with 
occasional instances of 2% and 4%.  I still have not been able to load a web 
page but I do once in a while get back some pings.

My old laptop's "Connected to jerry at ..." rate varies from around 40% to 50% 
(it's a few feet farther from the router.)  It's been connected and working 
all day.

Any ideas what I can do to get Laptop2 to work wireless?

     -Jerry

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Jerry Lapham
Monroe, OH  45050
rjlapham at gmail.com
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