Really disturbing network problem

Today at home I had my laptop computer booted with SuSE Linux.  I was just doing some web browsing, when suddenly I lost my wireless connection.  Even my Skype was disconnected.  What's most strange is that I couldn't even see my neighbors' wireless networks.  Very very odd.

Then I rebooted my computer, but this time to Windows XP, and still, I couldn't see any wireless network.  I usually see about six or seven wireless networks by the way.  Then I carried my computer nearer to my router and plugged it with an Ethernet cable.  No success.

Then I turn on my iPaq, and this one can see several networks.  Shit.  I even run the self test, and this one too tells me that it's not connected to any network at the moment.  After a while suddenly my computer starts to see my home wireless network and since then has worked fine.

I don't know how that happened, but obviously it was a hardware problem.  How annoying.  Also, when I've booted with Windows I get lots of random beeps, the kind that you get when you plug and unplug a USB device.  Ummm, it would be nice to get a new computer.  We'll see.