Inspiron Duo unusable internet

I recently got an inspiron duo and connected it to my sky broadband for the first time to see my download speed around 30kb a second, it's been a week and the most i have seen now is 300 a second and most of the time my laptop is struggling to find a connection to my modem at all.

Why is this?

Why do i have lousy speed and constantly only 2 or 3 bars on my connection when my old laptop had 5 nost of the time?