[saabmania2]

i'm running 3 vista pc's and 2 vista laptops through my network and i've never had a problem with them disconnecting, dropping or forgeting connections.
have you got the latest updates on your system?
also you say you are running via a netgear router i had one of those and had nothing but problems with it (simular to the one's your having) but that was with xp.

also on another thought have you loaded any other firewall software or antivirus that might be conflicting with the vista software as vista already has windows defender pre-loaded it might have conflicts.

hope some of this helps a bit