Try holding the alt-key and clicking on the wifi symbol. That gives some more information about the WiFi connection. The signal strength is the "RSSI" field in the menu. What does it say?
If the signal strength is in the range of -80 to -100, it's bad reception. Anything between -20 and -80 is ok (closer to 0 = better, but I don't think you can get better than -20 even if the laptop is sitting on top of the router). Typical value should be maybe 60-70, depending on router / walls / distance to router and such. If you have very bad signal strength even though the computer is fairly close to the router, it might be a bad antenna on either side. It can also be that the channel used is interfering with something (other wifi networks, microwaves, or whatever), you can try changing the channel in the router settings.