Cannot connect to wireless network in Vista

I am at a conference and the guy sitting next to me was trying to connect to a wireless access point in Vista. It was saying that it was connected – but it was not getting an internet connection.
I checked the IP address and it was correct , the wirless zero configuration was also set up correctly- so my solution was to download firefox on my laptop and install it on the other laptop…. it worked a dream.
The moral to this story (like many others), is stay away from IE!!!