Yeah, I've been wondering about those netbooks. My only real issue is that if I'm buying a new machine it has to last me a while and I want it to be able to take whatever I throw at it (not literally). Netbooks have no CD drive, though i do know I could get an external one that hooks up through the USB port. I'm so iffy on it, but with the battery life and size (which helps on the portability) it's very inviting. If I back up the stuff on my husband's desktop that is using linux, I could switch it so it runs on windows instead with the help of our friend, and then I could use his as a base computer and the netbook simply for lugging to class/work which may be the better idea. I need to do some convincing. I need to make it sound like I cannot fix the computer I currently have, and convince him that the netbook is my best bet.
Would he still be able to use/edit his files that were using Linux if he now would not have a computer running on Linux? I have no idea what the issues with going between OS's are, except that I get pissed off when the departmental computers at school try to turn my MS Word documents into DOCX, thus making the file unreadable to those computers.