Nothing works properly now

Please bear with me, as I know almost nothing about a Mac. This is my first one and I must have gotten a lemon or something. I love it, but it locks up more often than any PC I've ever sat in front of, well, except for Windows Me. ;D Anyway, it's the base model MBA and I haven't installed but just a couple programs.

So far, I've installed the Coconut Battery application, MS Office 2007:Mac and a program called ECMLink that allows me to interface with one of my cars. In order to do that, I had to install software for a serial to USB connection, but that is only used when I hook up the MBA to my car.

Other than that and configuring my email, I haven't done anything. When I set it up, it automatically found my XP box upstairs and set up the connection.

Everything was working great for a couple months and now almost nothing works right. Programs are constantly locking up and requiring a force quit, most notably Excel. Sometimes I can access my XP box, but after a couple minutes the connection will be terminated and I get this error message:

"Server Connection Interrupted" along with the name of the last folder I was accessing on the XP box. If I click "Disconnect" and wait a couple minutes, it will magically reconnect on it's own and work for a little while before disconnecting again.

I also tried to do my updates 3 times now, but keep getting a message saying that the updates can't be saved and then it fails. The first update it tries is iTunes.

After performing a force quit on Excel, I tried to reboot, the Mac hung and I was forced to hold the power button to turn off the Mac. I left it sit for about 10 minutes before doing that and it was stuck on the desktop after all the icons had been removed.

Is there some type of log file here that I can upload for someone to take a look at. Thanks for your time. This is just frustrating since I paid $1700 for this thing a couple months ago after hearing how stable Mac's are. That's why I think I got a lemon or there is something seriously wrong.

EDIT -> I also just noticed that it dumping my internet connection from time to time.

have you tried calling support? You have multiple issues, and they really may be the best option. That may include making a genius bar (I still HATE the name) appointment and bringing it into them to have a look.

Thanks for the response Mike.

Does that cost money? I'm not sure how long my warranty is for this computer, but I'm thinking a year, so will it be covered? I also hate calling support, since I normally get someone that barely speaks English and is following a flow chart.

Also, the closest Apple store is at least 2 hours away. I'm going through some of the Sticky repair suggestions and I'll see what happens. It did find a lot of incorrect permissions, so maybe that is part of the problem.

I believe that the free phone support is the first 90 days for software issues and then the HW warranty is indeed a year. How long have you had it?

It was delivered on September 5, 2008. So it sounds like I would be outside of the free support.