I frequently have problems synchronizing the time, but not just on my Thinkpad. Lots of XP systems. It is a little buggy. I think that the time synchronization doesn't work if the computer is part of a domain / active directory. It will synchronize the time with your domain controller instead.
As for access connections, I haven't had any of those problems. One thing I will note is that you don't want to download the wireless driver as part of windows updates. Definitely use the one provided by Lenovo or Access Connections. The standard Intel driver (presuming you have an Intel card) is not meant to work with Access Connections - it just works properly when you use the windows wireless networking manager. I suspect this is what happened. I had a mess of trouble when I tried to use the standard Intel driver with Access Connections.