MacBook - Flaky connection with Vista machine

I needed to transfer some files from my main Vista box to my new MacBook so I assigned static addresses on both sides and hooked them up with a cat6 cable hoping to transfer over gigabit network -- then problem started:

Connection is very unstable -- dropping about 30% of all packets.
Downgrading it to 100MBps makes it much more stable, but it only realistically functions at around 1Mbps transferring stuff @ ~150kb/s, but at least it doesn't drop packets.

I had to resort to wireless to transfer the files -- samba failed miserably. It was extremely unreliable when it worked, but it didn't even connect most of the time.
I am transferring files over ssh right now through wireless which is going at around 1.5Mb/s or about 100 times slower than i wanted to transfer my stuff.

Anyone seen this??? What is going on?
Any suggestions welcome. Thanks a lot!

P.S. I just check and my Dell notebook is able to transfer @ 10Mb/s over same cable (it only has 100Mbps NIC) with the same settings. Is my MacBook hating on Vista?

Err... I just noticed I posted in hardware forum. Admins, could you please move it, or delete and I'll repost. Thanks.