I bought a netbook secondhand, to use for a specific project (I needed a mobile system to use as an automated remote control for my DSLR, and the Mac camera drivers weren't capable of doing the job, but there are open-source drivers that work great on Linux). When I bought it, it had a clean system restore of Windows on it. It was slow. The first thing I did was wipe the drive and install Ubuntu. And, lo and behold
It was still slow. Painfully slow, in fact.
Combined with the horrible keyboard, so-so trackpad, and tiny, low-quality screen, I hate using it. It serves its intended purpose quite well, so I don't regret buying it, but I would never want to use one for any length of time. When I have to actually use it on occasion, I will set it up on my desk next to my MBP and connect over VNC. It's very nearly as responsive that way, and much less unpleasant to operate.
So, yeah, netbooks suck. As cool as they seem, and as sexy as the form factor is, it's too bad they're really just total crap. But at least they're cheap crap (or rather, they were). I am a bit bummed that they're not being made anymore, as I can conceive of quite a few uses for them as a cheap customizable semi-embedded system, but all in all that's not much of a market, and there are other solutions available now that fill that role anyway (Raspberry Pi, Arduino, etc.)
