I have no good answer for you, really. I've had a couple of netbooks, I think with even less memory than you have. I tried never to install much, other than firefox, and whatever pictures I had taken on that trip. Trying to keep everything to a minimum.
I just bought my first HP NetBook a couple of weeks ago at Costco, but haven't opened the box yet. If it is flaky, I'll just take it back.