USB Printer and Hard Drive sharing no longer working

So I bought a new Airport Extreme yesterday and have a couple issues the first is a easy question. I have a Macbook 2.16 intel core duo 2 that I bought a couple days ago. How do I know if the laptop is using the "n" wireless technology? I have gone through all settings and cannot find out how exactly it is connected.

The other question is when I was first setting it up I had the printer and USB HD hooked up and they worked perfectly through a UBS hub. After I upgraded the firmware and later installing the software off the CD that came with the airport nothing works quite right. When I plug only the printer into the back of the airport the computer will not recognize the printer is connected no matter if I power cycle or try and unplug and replug the UBS cable. Secondly the USB hard drive is painfully slow now for loading and playing movie files or music.

Should I downgrade the firmware or hard reset the airport? Also the hard drive never really played movie files smoothly from the get go. Is this normal? I would think the file transfer would be fast since the speed of the airport is "extreme" 🙂

Thank you for any help in advance