Agreed. Methinks the Intel Pro 2200BG is incorrectly setup for Ad-Hoc instead of Infrastructure.
Have you ever actually tried "auto" on a busy network? I have, with a Dlink DI-624 rev c1 v2.70 and was rather disgusted. What seems to happen (not sure) is that the AP uses the "noise level" to trigger a channel change. If the noise level is relatively high on all channels, the stupid access point will hop around every 30 seconds or so. That normally wouldn't be a problem if the clients were smart enough to follow the access point, but they're not. Intel Proset was fairly fast, but most took forever to realize that the access point has disappeared and finally decide to scan for a suitable connection. If the client is XP SP2 using Wireless Zero Config in the default "use any available connection" mode, it will often reconnect to someone elses access point. I've dealt with customers claim that their wireless clients will "jump" to a different access point without provocation. Investigation usually (not always) leads to an access point set to auto channel selection. I'm not a big fan of auto channel selection in its current implimentation although I can see where it might be useful.