I have bought a netbook. I spent a long time trying to justify buying one but the truth is I wanted one and sometimes that is reason enough. After weeks of searching through reviews and articles, I decided on a Asus eee S101H. Unfortunately they don't come in orange so it is black.
One very important point about this netbook is that the 230V power supply is tiny and the cable very long. A perfect, but unusual, combination.
The shops only had devices with Windows pre-installed so the first thing I did when I got home was deleted the operating system and installed something a lot better. I decided to install the 9.04 version of Ubuntu Netbook Remix. I did so following the instructions at http://www.jpierre.com/2009/04/installing-ubuntu-netbook-remix-904 -jaunty-jackelope-on-eee-pc-the-howto-guide/
I began by running the OS from a USB stick and saw that everything ran no problem including WLAN, camera and external mouse so I then installed it to the hard disc.
Next I installed Google earth. It ran very slowly but removing "atmosphere" from the "view" menu solved that.
I then added my delicious.com toolbar to firefox so that I had all my bookmarks. Also no problem.
Skype also works. The sound quality is nothing great but I can use it.
The netbook can connect via WLAN but I also bought a “Web stick” that allows me to connect via the phone network. I tested it by placing my SIM card from my phone in it (I have a contract with a data contingent) and it worked after I rebooted with the web stick in the USB slot.
WLAN works but not WPA2.
I could also not turn WLAN on and off using the “Fn-F2” combination. Following the instructions at http://greg.geekmind.org/eee-control/#download I installed eee-control. Strangely I had to do a reboot before it would work but now, with this, I can turn the WLAN, camera and card reader on and off.