Unfortunately there are multiple things that can cause intermittent Wifi problems. Doubly unfortunately, one of the most difficult for the non-techie to diagnose is Wifi interference which comes in two varieties -- interference from devices such as cordless phones, microwave ovens etc. on the 2.4GHz radio band, and actual Wifi interference from other access points in your vicinity. You won't be able to measure the former without special hardware, but you can experiment with switching off any devices that you suspect might cause interference. The latter is easier to measure but not necessarily to fix.
How many wireless access points can you see when you go to configure your wireless? I used to be the only one on my street. Now I can see between 4 and 14 from my immediate neighbours, depending on which room of the house I'm in. Try a Wifi monitoring tool such as InSSIDer Office (
www.metageek.com) which you can try free for 30 days. (You won't need it for longer than that, so can dump it). Look at which channels are overlapping with yours and try switching channels. You'll have to do a bit of reading to understand the basic concepts here. However, there's every chance that there's no simple configuration fix to the problem. In my case I had to buy a wireless range extender (which runs Ethernet signals over the house electrical wiring to a plug where I have an additional wireless access point). It hasn't been a ************************* solution but it basically works and I am getting a fairly solid 60 Mbps over Wifi from a bedroom where there used to be frequent dropouts.
However, I'd caution you not to waste money on hardware solutions until you understand your basic problem. Start by ascertaining whether the problem is exacerbated by distance from your wireless router. Also, don't be misled by the fact that other devices (phones, tablets etc.) might be having less of a problem -- aerials and other wireless equipment vary greatly from device to device, so this is not a good guide. Another seemingly silly (but important) thing to check is whether your problem occurs when the laptop is running on mains as well as battery power. Some wireless cards are configured to be shut down to save power when running on battery, and don't always wake up when required. But if you're having problems where you were having none before, then wireless interference has to be a prime suspect.