Speak to Me of Macs

So, here's the deal. Stephen and I bought a brand-new iMac in October. It has an intel processor. We also have high speed cable internet through Comcast. Here's the problem. Sometimes, we have an intermittent internet signal. Keep in mind here that the modem (owned by Comcast) is directly connected to the cable, and the computer is directly connected to the modem with a line into the USB port. When this happened for the first time last week, we called Comcast, and they did what they could on their end and determined that our service was up continuously, and they tested our modem and it "received" all of the "pings" that they sent it. The next morning when Stephen talked to Apple, the woman that he talked to said that she had never heard of the problem, although her supervisor came on the line later and said that he had experienced the same problem and that his modem had died soon thereafter. NOW, in addition to all of this information (and predictability, Comcast doesn't want to say that the problem is on their end it must be our COMPUTER, and Apple doesn't want to say that the problem is on their end, it must be a problem with our MODEM) I also found articles on the Apple site last week talking about this very problem. Apparently, with some older versions of the iMac there were known problems with Comcast cable internet, namely, that the internet connection would be intermittent. That particular article (two years old, I might add) suggested calling Comcast and asking them to cycle our modem on their end (they can do that because they own the service and the modem.) Last week we did that and clicked a button on our networking page on the iMac labeled "renew dhcp lease" and our internet was problem free. For exactly one week. Then the same thing started happening last night, at pretty much the same time.

So, what's the deal? If anyone out there has experienced this and knows what to do to fix it I would be very greatful. Obviously, if the insanely expensive computer that I bought is not going to deliver to me the thing that I use it for the most: internet, then why shouldn't I send it back to Apple? And if the insanely expensive high speed internet service that I pay for isn't going to work with my new computer, why should I pay for that either?

There are no known outages in my neck of the woods, I have done anything unusual with the computer lately. I just don't get it. The only other thing that we've done to the computer lately is segregate our hard drive and install Windows XP.

This is why I have no pictures up by the way. No internet at home means no pictures on the blog. But I have been knitting. And I'll talk about that either: tomorrow or Monday, if we can't get our internet up and running.