Today I connected my laptop up to a network, but couldn’t get on the Internet, or anywhere, for that matter.  I was just about to start looking into the issue, when I noticed an exclamation point on the network connection on my screen.  I hovered over it, and it offered to diagnose my problem.  I thought “sure, let’s give that a try”.  I clicked on “Diagnose my problem.” and within a few seconds, it reported that I had a static IP address set, and would I like to change to dynamic to fix my problem?  I responded yes, and sure enough, all of my troubles were resolved.  I had forgotten that I set a static IP address the night before when working on some network equipment.  I may have been an idiot and forgotten that I set that, but it looks like Windows 7 might just be idiot proof.