Well, if you are willing to try "localhost" then you should be willing to try "127.0.0.1", which is the so-called "loopback" address (which is what localhost is supposed to resolve to, even). Using 127.0.0.1 will continue to work even when you have a LAN link (the loopback never goes down unless the TCP/IP stack has crashed, in which case you need to restart anyway).

I suppose you could try manually putting an entry for "localhost -> 127.0.0.1" into your hosts file.

tooki