ACER aspire wifi problem

I bought an Acer Aspire 17'' laptop with Windows Vista at Christmas. I have Virgin Media at home, was given a Netgear router by them, installed their software, and my wifi connection at home works fine. When I take the laptop outside into a free wifi area, I have tried 2 pubs and Mac Donalds, when I try to connect it just won't.

I also took it to my friends house to try to connect to their wifi network. Again, no such luck. It finds local wifi computers in the area, I selected my friends one (with best signal strength) I put in the password to connect to their network and it won't connect. When I click on the link that says identify the problem, it says "the connection to xxxxxxxx was cancelled due to user action."
I also get this message when I try to connect to free wifi areas too.

When I look at the internet management utility console, it shows 4 connections that have been saved. The top one being the home Virgin Media connection I have stored. I had read somewhere that it is best to move the connection you want to the top of the list. What's interesting is when I move another connection up to the top of the list, about 2 seconds later, it automatically moves it back down the list, and the home Virgin Media connection is back at the top of the list.

I think this is the cause of my problems. It tries to connect to the wifi network I select, but then 2 seconds later it tries to connect back to my home wireless setting.

Does anyone have any ideas what is going on and how I resolve this issue?
Thank you.