Wubi reads the Windows registry and may even "borrow" the Windows
files necessary for automatically using NDISwrapper to enable the
wireless card.

Couldn't you use a Live CD like Puppy to download the Windows Wi-Fi files? I
use Puppy Linux when fresh Windows installs have no drivers for LAN or Wi-Fi.
In fact, I just fixed a DSL modem that wouldn't connect until I connected with
my Puppy CD to download the malware scanners and Ccleaner that she needed.
There are Internet Cafes that run on Puppy, too. The new version can use some
Ubuntu 10.04 files, but older computers can use Wary as it's Puppy from Barry.

The way around this is to do the initial install with the system
plugged into broadband via an Ethernet cable and do all the updates
plus hardware drivers. Just did this on a DELL Studio laptop and when
hardware drivers were displayed there were two listed for the Broadcom
Wi-Fi card, one of which was a proprietary driver which worked fine
but if you wish to stay away from proprietary stuff the generic one
should also do the trick ( you can always try this first and switch to
the proprietary one if needed.) If you had a different Wi-Fi card then
the Live CD would have more than likely got on-line wirelessly too but
I always think that doing an initial install using ethernet connection
is a good idea as it pulls down many updates as it installs - can't do
that with Wi-Fi :-)

BTW - the DELL Studio has touch sensor buttons to control CD Player,
volume, and also eject the slot loading DVD drive. All of which worked
perfectly on a 10.04LTS installation. Customer over the moon after
being seriously unimpressed at getting hit with one of those fake AV
scams through no fault of theirs - they fell foul of the compromised
syndicated advertising feed that was hacked recently, all they did was
go to the Times web site as normal ! They were also unimpressed with
Vista overall anyway so it was a 'double whammy' getting hit !!

So you're thinking that doing a normal install from a downloaded ISO of, say,
10.10 or netbook should detect my hardware and give me the appropriate drivers?
That's what Wubi did, though I installed it wirelessly. It didn't get my hotkeys
working, though. It would be nice if the full installation would get those
working, too.

Provided you are connected with an ethernet cable to broadband then
yes it will detect the Broadcom chipset Wi-Fi card and offer the
drivers for it.

You mentioned wanting to get the hotkeys working. I spent a lot of
time working on this with my toshiba laptop. I was never successful,
but in my efforts, I have quite a few bookmarks with various solutions
for different laptops. If you post the make and model of your
computer, I'll cross check and see if I have any specific workarounds
saved (I know you probably already mentioned it somewhere, but I don't
know where)...

Thanks. It's an ASUS K60IJ. I've seen the workarounds for the eee series, but
never this one.

Before reinstalling from whatever version of ubuntu CD
you can run it live from CD
and see if the Wifi, sound etc work,
if so the drivers are on the CD so go ahead and install as dual boot.