Actually Ralink chips are used in a lot of name brand stuff. so that's not specifically good or bad in and of itself.
The first thing I would suggest in an attempt to help prevent 'wonkness' would be to make sure the usb port is not set to go low power or sleep.
To Disable Selective Suspend:
open the control panel
go to power options (you may have to set view to small icons)
click change plan settings
in the window that opens:
click change plan settings
click change advanced power settings, expand usb and ensure usb selective suspend is disabled.
edit: you may also want to consider disabling ipv6 as some lower end devices don't really support it.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929852