Cannot find the internet connection icon in Vista and speed problem

hi there,
i have a problem with my internet connection icon in vista.
i used to have windows xp on my laptop and i have a router to connect wirelessly to the internet.
with xp, each time i connected there was the wireless icon, along with the internet connection icon, and by rightclicking on it, i could my internet speed, i.e. 4mbps. now, with vista i have only the wireless icon (enabled) but no internet connection icon. where is it?
and one more thing, when i had xp, my speed was excellent, never reaching the 4mbps but i had a decent 2-2,5. now, in vista it almost feels like i'm back to a dial-up connection, it's just so very slow. is it vista problem, my provider's problem or something else?

 

That isn't a standard XP feature, and is more likely to be added by software installed from the CD that came with the Router. Personally, I'd not install it on your Vista system as you don't need connection software when you are using a router, and you can get better speed statistics using one of the on-line speed checking sites.

However, I'd look at you IE rather than your internet connection for any difference in speed between XP and Vista. Also do you have plenty of RAM in the laptop. Vista needs a lot more RAM than XP (at least a gig).

Of course the easiest way to improve your web browsing performance is to dump IE and use a proper web browser like Firefox or Opera.

 

Nuh, i use firefox not IE and i have 4gb RAM. i switched to a stable ip address this morning and opened a port in my firewall through where i channel my p2p apps. i did go a bit better regarding the speed, but i still don't have the internet connection icon inside the connections window.. oh well...i know it's not really important but!