Like bullfrog said the auto-reconnect will work fine.
Buying a router for R600 or so is a waste of money if you dont share the connection at all. But it does make things easier, just not worth the money if you dsont use its main function.
Don't know if anyone recalls, but I had constant disconnections. My auto-redail in the dailup settings did not work. Didn't think of using apps though, and im not on a router as it would be a waste of money for my purposes.
So, if you get disconnections and want to auto-connect, I don't know. All i know is that the auto-redail doesn't work.
I think the problem with Auto-dial is that your actual connection to the network might not always drop in windows' eye. So it wont always redial if you have a dead connection.
Well im ust randomly geussing now.. anyway, there are apps to do this im shure. try google...