I'm not declaring victory yet, however, first computer's NIC may be suspect.
Going through a full do-over on the fresh computer _may_ have done the trick. Some of the issues did appear on 3 different computers, however, a full system image reset on the new computer may have aligned things correctly.
Can anyone confirm what happens on a power-on reset? Is there an agreement/licensing checkbox that should appear, or does it go straight to the default login? I would like to verify that it is resetting completely before deploying it.