Refalm, since I know you're the ONLY person in µCosmos so far that could answer this, I'll address this to you. On my Ubuntu install on my netbook (Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat on a Dell Mini Inspiron 1010, AKA Dell Mini 10v), the wireless drivers are hopelessly fucked up. On certain wireless routers (The main suspect is Verizon's rebranded ActionTec router that comes with all Verizon FiOS installations), I can connect to the network but I can't contact any network devices OR the internet. My dad has made sure that there isn't anything blocking the laptop on the router, so all we see would be that the wireless config on the local machine is dead. Oh, and the Ethernet works, just not the wireless. Driver is bcmwl-kernel-source (Broadcom STA proprietary driver)
Wireless drivers are usually bad, not because of gnome-network-manager, but because it's kinda a reversed engineered Windows driver, since some Wifi manufacturers that aren't Broadcom, nvidia or Intel are assholes. Have you tried disabling IPv6 yet? Could you also tell me what IP address you're getting on the wifi interface? And what driver it uses?
Distributions like Ubuntu and Linux Mint are incredibly user-friendly (which is a politically correct way of saying: even the dumbest blonde housewife could work with this), so you shouldn't have any trouble connecting to your router.
