MSN being "perfectly connected" tells little about your connection status.

But, with WiFi Power save activated, to generate data going OUT wakes up the WiFi and makes it send things so if you're trying to connect to something, this should not be a problem.

Sometimes I need to use ping in an XTerminal first, to then start the browser and get data. I'm guessing this is a combination of power save and high latency in the network.

Play around a little and see what happens. Rebooting is not the answer...