Hackaday points out another good thing about netbooks, at least from the perspective of someone who likes tinkering with computers: their cheapness and portability gives them great hacking potential.
Not the sort of hacking where you end up in jail, of course–but rather the world of risky upgrades, aggressive customization, or even just stenciling some artwork onto the case. After all, if you muck it up, you’re only out about $300!
we cover the netbook market for different reasons than most: their low low price makes people much more willing to hack on the device. for the price of a smartphone, you’re getting a fully capable laptop. the low performance doesn’t matter as much since we’re running different flavors of linux that are much lighter than windows. people running osx86 are doing it to address a market that apple doesn’t.
Eliot Phillips has a monster comments thread open where you can pitch your ideas for netbook hacks.
I’ve got to admit, they’re almost getting down into the price range where they can replace microcontroller cards for experimentation. (Which is particularly amusing because the first PCs _were_ a reapplication of processors intended as microcontrollers.)
When I hack my Commodore 64, I’m only risking $30 replacement cost on eBay.