Random network dropouts on certain networks on OSX

tbloxham

So heres a wierd thing that happens. When I travel for work I often bring my mac laptop with me (despise it as I do) and being a mac that I use it is prone to numerous stupid and unexplained errors which annoy me continually. The greatest of these is that sometimes when I'm using a network (most often a hotel network) despite the fact I have a full bar of connection the spinny colour wheel of inexplicable problems will continually pop up as I navigate from web site to web site, or if I move on a single website. Safari is simply totally non functional on such networks, and Firefox works in the manner described. Very slowly and with random crashes.

Has anyone else experienced a problem like this? My OSX (10.5) is fully up to date with all the latest patches (horrifying and irritating process as patching stuff on a max is) and since it doesn't tell me anything about the error or problem its very hard to search for what might be going on. I think its something to do with the mac not knowing how to deal with a connection shared between lots of people, since often the problem will dissapear in the early morning, but the computer will be unusable in the evening. Its just odd that it nearly crashes continually, even when not downloading stuff, and only on certain networks rather than just being slow. The problem always dissapears on wired networks, and I've never seen it on say my home or work network no matter how slow they run.

Sorry for ranting, I'm just so sick of this blasted thing. I wish I still had my old PC laptop Does anyone have any thoughts? Perhaps theres some setting which is default to "Crash browser at random when on slow network" on macs?

edit - And wierdly enough, it doesn't happen on the penny arcade forums? Although on other forums the crashing is continual