Wish I could be more help, but I have stayed away from ADO when using Access.
Here are my reasons, and if someone else can offer a reason why I should goto to ADO, I welcome that.
1) Microsoft seemed to got to the ADO model in Access 2000, but have dropped the push in Access 2002 XP. So I am guessing they are going a different direction in XP (Note: ADO Still works in XP, but it is not in any of MS Access help files)
2) I use Access for quick development, but ADO requires that you write code for all queries and joins to remote tables, so all those queries that you designed in the access query design window need to be moved into VBA code.
3) You need to code the connection in ADO, but using ODBC, you can use all of the built in tools from access to connect, and retrieve data. If I was going to code everything, I would have selected VB as my development language.
4) It is just easier using ODBC, so unless I need to have a feature that is only available in ADO, I go easier/faster since my clients do not want to pay for the extra time I would need to bill.
These are my reasons. I can write an automated procedure to setup/create an ODBC connection for my user in about 2 hours.
Hope this Helps, Good luck with ADO...
Access Add-on developer