Acer Aspire 7720-6604 (Cdn) slow download speeds

As noted before in previous posts, I was concerned about slow page loading speeds with this new laptop. I had done comparisons with this new laptop and my Toshiba satellite A70, 2.8Ghz Celery, 768MB RAM, Realtec RTL8/810x family Fast Ethenet NIC.
I was concerned enough that I booked a call with an ISP tech who was here today. He tried several download tests with a test site provided by the company and found that the new laptop was download/transfering data at around 200-400Kb/sec while the old laptop was getting download speeds of 1.6Mb/sec.
The AV programs and firewalls were disabled for each of the tests. Tried updating the driver on the new laptop but it had the newest driver available.
I deleted the driver and rebooted with no better results. I have an email out to Acer as of an hour or so ago and am awaiting a response from their tech.
I believe that there is a bad ethernet card/circuit in this laptop.
Any other suggestions or ideas I might try in the interim.
Regards
Gene

No router. The laptops were plugged in to the desktop modem at alternate times

Cable modem comes from the ISP and it was also replaced when the tech showed up with a newer model (ISP initially thought that may have been the problem). Old laptop worked great with both the old and the new cable modems. New cable modem is a Motorola SB5101. The old one was the same brand but an older model

I went to Start>Programs>Accessories>run and typed in that command without the quotes and there was a flicker of a DOS type window but it didnt stay up

Forgot to add, should I be disabling the windows firewall and the AV. I removed Comodo yesterday as when the ISP tech was trying to disable it for the testing, it always stayed on. Even when I went in and uninstalled it once in the program files when we went back to Security in the control panel is was still shown as active. I then re-installed Comodo and uninstalled in the Program Administrator and it still showed as operating. I finally did a system restore to a point before Comodo was installed and that finally got rid of it. Am now just using the Vista firewall

Any idea how to access safe mode on this thing, I tried the F10 that my Toshiba used, no joy.
Ididnt mind the Comodo, it was just a pain in the butt trying to remove it. I dont want to have to restore should I ever want to delete it. My give the Zone alarm a shot, but dont want to add anything more because this thing may be going for a ride back to Acer repair depot in Ontario

I found out that F8 gives access to Safe Mode panel, went in and selected Safe Mode>Enter and it went to a normal boot to windows. No safe mode in the corners. Went back in and selected Safe Mode and Networking same thing, went to a normal boot. Weird

When the Safe Mode menu shows up and I select the "Safe Mode" or "Safe Mode with Networking" options, it goes to a black screen and starts loading windows files then stops and starts to boot up as per normal

Just checked, and I do have aministrator rights. What I could do Is use the restore disks, but I dont know that it would do much good as they are disks made from the original load about an hour after I received it. So, if it was a bad load at the factory, then the restore disks would be bad too....right???

I did try and go back to that restore point I made just after I received it and no difference. I beleive that the Ethernet circuit is faulty. As mentioned, I do have an email into Acer Tech support outlining all this and just waiting for an answer. I beleive that he will tell me to box it up and send it in. I do have the original shipping containers and they will be hanging around til after warranty expires. Expect to hear from them today or tomorrow (holiday weekend)

Yeah it is kind of a bummer and the other thing is that there are no repair centers in Atlantic Canada. The laptop has to be shipped to Toronto, which makes it a pain in the butt when it has to go in. At least with Toshiba, there were a couple of authorized repair centers here in town. When I get this sorted out, I am considering utilizing the "D" drive which is empty, for an install of WinXP. I dont have a copy of it so will have to go out and purchase one. I am not putting down Vista, but was very happy with XP and if it would have been available at purchase time, I believe I would have went with it. Having two 160G hard drives in the new lappy, gives me that option, as I dont believe that I would ever fill a 160G drive. My 5 yr old Toshiba had a 60G drive and it never got above 30-40% full. I dont save any videos/movies, music or pictures. I burn them as soon as I get enough to fill a CD or DVD.
If I was to go with XP on the second drive, when I insert the XP OEM disk in the CD drive, will I get an option as to what drive I want to install it on. Also, I assume, that when the the laptop boots, I would get an option as to what OS I would want to use.
I see that there appears to be a full slate of XP drivers for this model at Acer and what isnt there, I should be able to find at the manufacturer sites. The only thing I didnt see is the common modules and whatnot for the special functions etc