That's a good summary, dude.
Need to be careful on trying to discover the root cause insomuch the event log I get when the problem hits is:
The description for Event ID 8000 from source NETwNe64 cannot be found. Either the component that raises this event is not installed on your local computer or the installation is corrupted. You can install or repair the component on the local computer.
If the event originated on another computer, the display information had to be saved with the event.
The following information was included with the event:
\Device\NDMP26
Intel(R) Centrino(R) Advanced-N 6235
The specified resource type cannot be found in the image file
This event is critical to the problem this thread is about. The root cause is around the binary NETwNe64 and how it interacts with the hardware, the operating system, the Intel PRO software and the wireless router. All the work arounds listed so far are to avoid this driver from erroring out which results in dropped connection. This is not exclusive to this card another intel card does the exactly same on another thread. If you aren't seeing this error than your issue is something else (not that it's less important but the error above is the driver error on Windows 8)
One of the main issues here is intel, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to bundle drivers across all its WiFi/Bluetooth/WiDi cards. Whatever intel muppet decided to do that didn't understand that when you bundle you hit huge problems when one of the products in the bundle has a driver issue. The issue here is to test changes you have to test across the set before release and so to find problems you have reverse engineer the whole set. This is why this has taken so long. If intel had a product manager who owned his own drivers and managed the product around them exclusive of the bloatware PROset software stack we would have had a fix ages ago. It's all down to intel being a chip maker and not a product maker. In short intel is not ready to do what it's doing and we pay the price with faulty products that can't be fixed in what the average man would say a reasonable time. For instance my Broadcom switch-out is stable, or will be until I can get the intel card back in to use WiDi as it says on the box.
Anyhow, it seems the base windows intel WiFi driver for windows 8 goes someway to prevent the error - although not all the way. As such, the closest you'll get to a working card - for most if not all the time - (when twiddling dials for newer drivers does not fix the issue) is to delete the Intel drivers and get back to the Microsoft one. Read earlier in the thread on how to do that. That will help for most of the time. For some WiFi routers you'll need to also drop from N to G only.
If you do this you might as well remove the PROset bloatware from your machine too, although this is not the root of the issue (but best to get rid of as much intel junkware as possible until the replacement driver arrives (assuming it ever will)).
In failing this get yourself either a USB WiFi transceiver and disable the Intel card, or a get a replacement card such as Broadcom and hold on until the intel driver arrives (assuming it ever will) before reinstalling it.
Hope this helps.
C-