Sleep function = wireless problem?

Question

I have an Intel iMac 2.4 GHz/OS 10.5.2 (the earlier version of Leopard came pre-installed) and a lynksis router.
Like many others I experienced an unstable wireless connection from day 1 with this computer. The other two Macs in the house, both running Tiger had and have no such problem.
Changing the router channel from 6 to 3 seemed to help somewhat, but the problem persisted.
I noticed it was worse when the computer had just been wakened from sleep. That is, the wireless signal would start strong then quickly fade away. I found that putting the computer back to sleep, then immediately waking it up would restore the signal, but I often had to do this a dozen times during a session of an hour or so.
Since there seemed to be some connection between the sleep function and the wireless connectivity I decided to experiment. I went to System Preferences/Energy Saver and set the sleep function to Never. The screen is still set to black out after fifteen minutes. So now the computer is awake all the time, only the screen darkens after some inactivity.
For three days now the wireless signal has been extremely robust - no fading out whatsoever and the bars have remained at full strength. This certainly doesn't explain the cause of the problem, but it does seem to be an effective work-around, at least so far.
Has anyone else had a similar experience? And can anyone explain why the sleep function would affect wireless connectivity?

Answer 1

That a graphics update would fix the sleep function (not to mention the associated wireless issues) seemed odd to me too. I'm just reporting what the Apple tech said. I do have the impression that if they really can't solve your problem their next objective is to get the caller off the line as pleasantly as possible. That may possibly be the case here.
I would certainly be interested to know if anyone else has a similar problem. The two necessary conditions seem to be:
1. Sleep function (as set from System Preferences) unreliable, e.g. doesn't always put the computer to sleep, sometimes invokes such a deep sleep that the computer must be unplugged to restart, sometimes wakes up by itself;and
2. Wireless signal slows to a crawl shortly after awakening from sleep (and in my case, remains unstable, requiring toggling sleep on/off or airport card on/off to resume strong signal.)
As long as I have the sleep function set to Never the wireless problem disappears. It's been almost two weeks now, so I'm pretty sure there's some link between the two conditions. After the last software update from Apple a couple of days ago I reset the sleep function back to 15 minutes and the wireless fade immediately started up again. Reset it to Never, and, voila!, no problem since.
I hope anyone else who has both sleep and wireless problems will try this. So far it's the first reliable clue I've found regarding the issue of unstable wireless.