For owners and enthusiasts of netbooks, handhelds,

I have a cute little pink lovable Acer Aspire One ZG5 -- a couple of years old -- running Windows XP.  I use it as a secondary laptop for traveling and taking to school so I don't have to worry about my main computer, a MacBookPro, being stolen. The Acer has never given me trouble until recently, when I upgraded my home wireless network to 802.11n. Now the Acer can't connect to my wireless -- or rather, it connects but cannot surf the web. My brother the computer guy told me that the wireless adapter inside the Acer (one of the bad old Atheros ones) cannot handle the new faster signal and that I need to buy a USB wireless adapter to use instead.

Which is fine, but when I did a little online windowshopping, it looked like a lot of those adapters come with an installation CD, and I don't have a CD drive on my netbook. Does anyone have experience using a USB wireless adapter with a netbook? Were there installation issues or could you just plug and play?

And of course, while windowshopping, I saw newer models of the Acer Aspire One, with slightly larger screens and wireless cards that can handle the 802.11n. Very tempting, but are they so much better than the earlier models? Has anyone upgraded and can compare? I would probably break down and buy one if they still came in pink.

I know this is kind of a rambly and discursive question, but I felt like this community could use some discursiveness :)

x-posted to my own journal