[Wylug-help] Slow Internet with Ubuntu 11.04

[Trevor Noland]

Twelve days ago I bought a laptop (never had one before, but thought it might be nice to be able to do things sitting outside,
instead of having to be in a stuffy room).
It's an Acer Aspire 5742G, and it was on offer. It has loads of core memory and disc memory, and a WiFi connection called Acer
Nplify 802.11b/g/n and comes with MS Win-7 preinstalled.
After figuring out how to get the laptop and the router to talk to each other, I played around with the O.S. for a few days,
deleting most of the bundled rubbish, and finally decided that what I really wanted was a nice cup of Ubuntu.
So I downloaded the latest (11.04) package, put it on a pendrive, changed the Bios to boot therewith, loaded a "live" Ubuntu and
then started the installation onto the HD. Chopping a lump off the Win-7 partition is very straightforward, as for the installation
itself, I had marked "download updates while installing", so in fact, from the amount of stuff that got downloaded, and the time it
took, (hours), I began to wonder if anything on the pendrive was actually used in the installation at all. More still when, after
rebooting the new O.S., and checking with the update manager (which took ages) I found there was still another 174MB of updates to
install (after installing from a still-warm "latest version", and downloading presumably even more recent versions of everything 
throughout the installation).

Anyway, all that is history just to put you in the picture.

What really worries me is that the Internet connection is so slow that it is unworkable.
What I've got is a dual-boot laptop, with both O.S.s using the same router and the same hardware, and the router stays on as I
switch between the two. MS W-7 works fine, but Ubuntu hardly works at all. The startup page with Firefox might take 5 minutes or
more (if it finishes at all) instead of a couple of seconds, the update manager took 45 min to download 4 MB (of the 174 MB) before
I cancelled it.
I've googled about it, and found I'm not alone with this problem.
I've tried the recommended fixes, which more or less amount to disableing IPv6 and changeing the size of data packets to speed up
broadband, but to no avail.
My desktop, which uses the same router but with a wired connection, has no problem with Ubuntu 11.04, and is up-to-date as far as
the update manager tells me.
I'd been using an old Red Hat Linux for years at work, until retirement, and Ubuntu since 10.04, but I'm no expert, which is why I
liked it. From what I'm told, unlike Unix, you don't have to be an expert to use Ubuntu.
But I would like to hear some comments/advice from the experts.... Please. Thanks.

Trevor.