Well, here I am, 4 days later and not a single dropped connection with my Atheros chipped Dell DW1703 WiFi card. I've left my laptop on since the 25th and every time I've come back to it, the WiFi was connected. No other changes were made to my router or my environment (smart phones, other WiFi devices, blenders, pets, etc). So clearly something is wrong with either the Intel 2230 hardware or the drivers. I should post this Intel 2230N on eBay for $10 and have it be a wash...but I'd feel bad for the person buying it and having to go through the same frustrating experience. Not to mention they'd probably think I sold them a defective WiFi card.
Now I think I can finally do my Windows 8.1 update and not have to worry about losing that Win 8 default driver.
laserface, ask Lenovo if they offer any other brand of card as a warranty replacement. My 2230N was doing the same thing and most times using the keyboard FN + WiFi key reset would get it to reconnect, but sometimes I just had to reboot. Frustrating thing to have to do with a new laptop. I also had an el cheapo (9.99 from Microcenter) USB WiFi N dongle that worked great, but I don't like having it stick out of my laptop, especially when I move it.
To anyone else...good luck. I hope Intel figures out a fix but if they can't...well there are other brands that don't have this problem. Atheros, Broadcom, take your pick and all can probably be found on eBay for around $10-20 bucks.
