I've been looking at netbooks, since indications are that my laptop's hard drive will die again soon, and that its LCD may follow.
I can't seem to find any netbook with a resolution better than 1024x600. I'm used to 1280x768; dropping down will be a real shame, but seems unavoidable.
I'm very interested in a machine with no moving parts. So far the only one I've found is the Dell Inspiron Mini 9, which has passive cooling, so no fan, and of course uses a SSD. I'm not completly sold on it though -- its battery is only a 4 cell; its wifi may not be well supported.
The Eee 901 is attractive due to its battery, but has a fan. I'm very noise sensative these days, and the fan would have to be whisper quiet to be acceptable. And even then I think it would annoy me. (Even quiet laptop hard drives annoy me.)
All in all, I wish I could wait another 6 months to a year and see if the next generation improves any. OTOH, I could buy both of these for less than the price of my current laptop.
got one for you, joey:
http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/5082229.htm
it's a 1380 x 768 screen, with the usual intel atom and 1gb of RAM. price i've seen as low as £324. the battery life is listed as pretty damn poor compared to some of the other netbooks, but i'd tentatively put that down to the drain caused by the higher-quality screen. reviews say that this is a rubbish machine for multi-tasking but that's because, duh, they're running windows XP! and we know where that can go :)
l.
http://www.beltal.com/on-sale/12310/8201973.html
not sure whether it's dodgy or good - you never can tell - but the really low-end versions of the HP2133, with 1ghz CPUs and 512mb RAM, are being listed from china at $165 (!). normally, the 1.2ghz and above CPUs, with 1gb RAM etc. etc. come in around £300.