Wireless problems

I appeal to you, all guru's and geniuses of the bbs, to help me with my wireless connection

I can't seem to stay connected to the network for any length of time. I have great signal strenth and link quality according to the wireless utility, but sometimes won't connect at all. It doesn't seem to matter whether I manually configure my ip or set it to automatic, or change any or my available settings in the utility such as preamble size, connection speed etc.
hammering the connect button in the utility sometimes works but usually when it doesn't want to work it just drops me repeatedly

also, when it is connected it sometimes works for a few hours without problems and allows me to download 2x-3x times faster than my 512k ISP should allow

none of the other computers that connect to the netgear access point have this problem

I use a abocom wireless card (802.11g) with the latest drivers if that helps