Update & Patch Installation Problems

Using newly installed OpenSuSE 11.1 and without exception so far, each day I get a red warning triangle advising me that updates are available.

Unfortunately also without exception, when I tell the applet to install I get an error message to the effect that metadata is wrong or not available and the update fails.

If I then go into YaST and try and do an update the downloads fail.

I am wasting so much time on this because the update software stalls and I have to wait for a time out after each failure before being able to abort, skip or quit.

I only have four repo sites set up as indicated elsewhere in this forum; update, oss, non-oss and Packman.

The overall service is so bad as to be alienating and a very poor advertisement for Linux in general. Is it just me or is everyone else having the same problem but not complaining and what can I do to get things working smoothly?

Budgie2