Check to see if you can use DD-WRT ( http://www.dd-wrt.com/site/index ) with your router. This way you don't need to buy entirely new hardware! :)

One thing I notice with most of these performance evaluations, is they test only synthetic benchmarks. Yes, an operating system can be benchmarked on its ability complete computations under time constraints. However, a more relevant benchmark would be Win 7's responsiveness. How long does it take to launch apps, menu's, etc? This would seem to be of more concern to people than, whether or not an OS can squeeze out a few more PC Marks.