Not sure whats going on with m repeater. Please help.

Okay so I have a repeater in the kitchen.. I don't know if this is bad but I really have no place to put it without some sort of electronic interference. Anyway If I have my laptop near the router I get full signal... Ill walk through the kitchen and the connection switches over to the repeater and all that. But that's only on the one laptop... With the other laptop I have the Dell Inspiron 1525. I'll walk away froim the router go through the kitchen and it doesn't pick up my router... I will have to go into network settings and disable the wireless then re enable it and then it will connect to the repeater... But lately its just been losing connection even after disabling and re enabling. Like it wont recognize the repeater and it goes back to the router signal which gives me less connectivity.I have other comps as well and they both can switch back and forth from the router and the repeater with no problem... Another question I have is I noticed the repeater has a Ethernet port at the bottom of the repeater.... Should I find a way to run a cord from the router to the Ethernet port on the repeater? I'm assuming that's what it is there for? It would be like a direct link to the router its self to the repeater making it more stable? Also the kind of router I have is linksysE1500, the repeater is linksys RE1000. Both are wireless N.