Migros is selling a cheap netbook for CHF 222.- http://goo.gl/1tZ5C Acer Aspire One AOD 255E-13DQws 1024x600 screen, 1GB RAM, 250GB disk 6-cell battery (!)
It's a perfect device for remotely-controlled network tests, like packet capture or any telnet/snmp/SIP/perlscript testing scenarios that you like.
Ubuntu runs immediately with full hardware support.
CentOS 5 would not run: "atl1c" NIC driver is missing, so those pre-configured Asterisk boxes won't run.
Windows, of course, gets thrown away immediately :)
Usually you get a 3-cell battery in a 300-franks notebook, but this one is coming with a decent 6-cell one. It's enough to watch movies for 4 hours in a row.
1024x600 screen is too smal for any real work, but quite good for Internet browsing and perfect for movies.
RAM is easy to upgrade to 2GB, but watch out the RAM clocking. As far as I recall, CL9 works, and others do not. The easiest way to check is to open the box and see what's inside.
cheers, stan