Newb needs some help

I have been tinkering with the Live CDs (Lucid Puppy, Peppermint One, Mint 10 and xPUD) with pretty good success. I think Linux is fantastic!

I LOVE the outright speed of xPUD (my slug PC boots in under a minute), but ran into a problem.
It runs fine from the CD, but will not connect to the internet. I searched around and apparently I need to add some drivers (an OPT file), but cannot add them to the CD as it is finalized.
That is ok, I wanted a "persistent" setup anyway so I can save screen resolution and maybe some bookmarks.

I installed xPUD on a USB drive, but can't get the computer to boot from that drive. I setup the computer to boot from the USB drive first, but it still jumps right to the hard drive and boots W7.
For reference, the computer is an older Dell with 1gb RAM, Windows 7 32 bit, Readyboost enabled (I wonder if Readyboost could confuse the BIOS?).

Anyway, here is what I did:
Downloaded the ISO.
Formatted the USB drive (Kingston Data Traveler 1gb) to FAT 32.
Tried both Unetbootin and Pendrivelinux programs to place the ISO on the drive.
With Unetbootin from xPUD, you are supposed to "rename isolinux.cfg to override syslinux.cfg on your drive" and this part confused me, so I tried the Pendrivelinux installer (which does not include renaming a file), with no luck.

Any idea as to what I am doing wrong?

EDIT: I am a moron! I changed the boot order on the computer and didn't realize that the entry in BIOS ("removable drive" or something like that) does NOT include USB flash drives. It is a Dell from 2001. I looked for updated BIOS, and there is an update from 2002 which still does not support booting from the USB.

However, I did find a program which allegedly allows USB booting (PLoP?). Might try that.

Thanks,
Bob