[nancywind]

Check out your configurations. Both, on the laptop and the router.

[Chooriwrocaxz]

I was able to get on my neighbors internet, so it's obviously my computer/router... but what?

[SinncmxM]

It's obviously my router... but the Netgear site doesn't want to admit it.

[mbaueee]

Do you have two way validation, e.g. do you validate with a WEP key or whatnot going the other way in addition to the MAC validation? Maybe the WEP key is wrong?

Otherwise i'd assume you had the MAC address wrong either mistyped or misread it. Only other possibility I can think of is some sort of incompatibility between router and wireless card, you could try googling the names together with "can't connect" in quotes and see what happens...

[Irravepem]

Eh, I don't like using MAC validation for this reason - sometimes it can be iffy (the software, not the validation). It is technically more secure than WEP encryption but ... meh, WEP is strong enough if you don't use something dumb like 0000000000 as the key, and it's a lot more consistent in its behavior.