Well, I tried my hand with the netbook format.  Got an HP mini - 10" screen version.  After upgrading the ram to 2GB - and reformatting to Windows 7 RC - I have to say there were some good points and bad points to the machine.

On the plus side, I liked the form factor - overall the size of the machine was nice.  The keyboard was good sized and natural to type on.  I didn't notice that it got particularly hot with use, and I found the battery life to be within expectations.

One thing that is rarely mentioned on netbook reviews that I read are any steps that the user should take to improve performance.  One important option is to turn the graphics settings down in Windows so that you have tuned the OS for performance over appearance.  Doing this on the Mini made a big difference in responsiveness of the unit.

If your netbook has an SD card reader, I highly recommend dropping a 4 or 8 GB SD card in the machine, and formatting it for ReadyBoost.  This puts the swap file on the SD card as opposed to on the hard drive.  That will accomplish 2 things.  First - since the access time for the SD is quicker, your machine should perform slightly better.  More importantly, since access to the SD card is electronic as opposed to mechanical, you should eek out a little better battery life over time, since the hard drive isn't having to spin as much.  Of course, if you have a netbook with a flash drive, this is irrelevant.

Probably my biggest complaint w/ the mini was with the screen - both the size of the screen overall, and it's resolution.  The 10" screen was okay - but 1024x768 is just too small to work on for an extended period of time.  No matter what I was doing, I felt like it was just too cramped.  Dialog boxes, pop-ups etc just seemed scrunched.

My final conclusion - if it's all you have available - it works well - but if you have a choice - for something slightly bigger - I would choose it every time.

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