I'll second this advice. Vista offers no real advantage over XP and is a resource hog. Netbooks, by definition, are not high-power machines. Perfectly adequate performance with XP will almost certainly become, slow, buggy performance under Vista (on a netbook -- I run Vista on my much more powerful lapbook without any problem).

After years of lugging around a T43/T61 I "downgraded" to that particular model & couldn't be happier. The 10" Asus was the first one I could comfortably touch type on which was a major factor in waiting for a netbook. The only mod I did was to swap the right shift and some of the arrow keys for a better feel (instructions on any Asus forum). The only negatives about the HA model are the lack of bluetooth & 802.11n - neither of which is critical for me.

The memory upgrade to 2Gb will take you about 30 seconds, just loosen two screws on the bottom, pop out the 1Gb SODIMM & replace. Any geek can replace the opsys to Vista, but there are a lot of special drivers etc you have to deal with -- again you can find the info by googling asus 1000ha forums. I hate Vista with a passion so it was no factor for me :p

Yes the Atom is slower than my dual-core. Yes I would rather have a bigger screen for running photoshop. Yes I do run MS office & it feels just a tad sluggish. Yes I feel better carrying a $350 machine while on the road than a $1500 one. No I will not go back to carrying the laptop when the 3 lb netbook with tiny powersupply is just so light in the carry on.

There are all kinds of rumors of what will be coming out at CES which starts Jan 8.

MSI for example has said they will show a touch screen model (though does not expect to produce it any time soon) and will introduce models that have both a hard drive and a flash drive, you can shut the hard drive off to extend battery life supposedly for 10 hours. Mobile broadband built in (though don't know which provider), etc.

Unless you need one right now, I would wait to see what's introduced in a couple of weeks, and what it does, if anything, to the current models prices.

speaking of MSI

Does anyone have experience with the 10 inch MSI Wind?

My brother in law has one (he's a super geek) and loves it. They were here for Thanksgiving, he only had it a week or two at that time, but he couldn't stop raving about it.

Anyone interested in netbooks should try them, side by side, to get the best match for your needs.

There are plenty of side-by-side comparisons searchable on google, to get anyone ready to compare the various netbooks.

I've not found anything better than my asus eee pc 1000h yet, but that's me and the marketplace locally... good luck with your own decision process.

Remember this is a dynamic market, something better will likely come out like clockwork. Watch out for many new models to improve on the current ones. :)

Or you could hold out for the Tablet Mac, due sometime in 2009.