How to install linux from an XP AA1?

Hi there, I've just bought the Aspire one AO150 model. Xp installed and the 160gb disk.

I'd like to give linux a go. However to do that I need to do two things.
Repartitiion my hard disk.
Boot a linux install disk

I have an 8gb usb stick.

But obviously I don't have a cd drive. I heard that I could boot stuff from a usb stick but I'm not sure how to get it to work.
I'd like to try the crunchbang distro so I've downloaded the iso, but I don't know how to "burn" it to the iso in a way that it will be bootable.
Also I'm not sure if the crunchbang install iso will allow me to shrink down my windows partition so it has space to make the linux partitions. If not, i need a way to make a bootable partition manager so I can repartition my disk prior to installing.

I don't have access to a linux system so I can't use linux to create the bootable usb.

I could have sworn I found a how to guide to making a dual bootable aspire one system from xp before I got my system, but now I can't find it for the life of me.

Any help??

 

Unetbootin is your friend. You can download it for Windows. It will download a CD image of your desired distribution and make the USB key for you:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNetbootin

 

Thanks, all the googling I did on "extract bootable iso usb" just pointed me to linux instructions for unetbootin, I assumed there wasn't a windows version.

I did find this tho that worked a charm.

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/crunchbang ... l-windows/

It has instructions for other distros and apps too.