Why is My Wireless Connection so slow ?

I just recently purchased a new Sony Vaio laptop with a built in wireless card and am having problems with my internet connection.

The router I'm using is a few years old, but has worked fine on my previous computers. It's probably about 30 feet away blocked by one wall.

The laptop I'm currently using is supposed to have a far range for wireless, and I've seen that it does from the other connections it detects, but whenever I connect to my network the connection becomes terribly slow. The ratio from outbound to inbound files becomes increasingly different.

Is there anything I can do to possibly improve my connection ? Any settings I should change on my new computer ?

Thanks

 

There is another laptop in the household, but it is hardly ever used. So i'm mainly the only one.

 

Also whenever I restart my router it seems to run at a high speed for about 5-10 minutes before drastically slowing down.

 

I'm going to try upgrading the firmware if I can ever find where the file i need to download is.

The Router i'm using is a dell truemobile 2300