I'll be honest here: I bought a Netbook just because I wanted one. I really don't have any lofty needs for one, but after considering the pros and cons of one, I decided that since I do often take data and other information to friends' and family houses, it would do well to have one. Plus I rather wanted the ability to be lazy and do my online course work without being tethered to a desk.
After doing a lot of side-by-side comparisons in store, I decided to pick this one up over other offerings by Asus, HP and Dell. I'm glad I did.
For further clarity I should mention, upon purchasing, I also purchased a 2GB ram upgrade because, unlike some Netbooks, this one is easily upgradeable. No fuss, just swap parts and go. Likewise, I decided to perform a Windows Anytime Upgrade from Windows 7 Starter to Windows 7 Home Premium. Windows 7 Starter DOES NOT have a 3 application limit as one reviewer here has posted, but it does have significant restrictions such as the inability to change desktop wallpapers.
The N450 Atom processor, which just released in January, is a powerhouse of a portable mini-CPU. On par with the late Pentium 4s, the Atom N450 is a hyperthreading processor which gives you two separate IO streams on a single core. This, alone, increases the abilities of this Netbook. With the 2GB of ram installed, Windows 7 Home Premium boots extremely fast and performs extremely well. Baseline RAM usage on Windows 7 Home Premium with only startup background services running is 450-465 megs, including running the modified Aero Glass UI.
At one point, I was multitasking Mozilla Firefox, Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 and Microsoft Excel 2007 and the system still hadn't capped out ram usage. The CPU handled having two processor and memory intensive applications open at once very deftly. A screenshot included shows Windows Task Manager performance on this machine while running Adobe Photoshop Elements 8. Even with these upgrades, battery life was impressive: 7 to 8 hours on a full charge, 5 to 7 if I ran a lot of intense applications.
However, it's not all sunshine and rainbows. The display seems to be matte but is just glossy enough that it can glare and become washed out with too much light. Additionally, the touchpad and buttons are not to my liking. The textured touchpad seems to have a life of its own and the button(s) are so sensitive that a light touch registers as a click. Windows 7 Starter will likely be fine for most people, however, for anyone who wants media center access, or the ability to customize their systems, an anytime upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium is a MUST. No, you won't be gaming on it, but you wouldn't be gaming (at least not very well) on a $499 laptop either.
All said, I am officially impressed and happy with this purchase. This little netbook easily outperforms low end laptops with a simple 2gb ram upgrade.