Dell Inspiron 9

according to HDTune, the drives are about the same:
http://www.jrin.net/2008_09_25/dell-ins ... age-review

 

jkontherun posted a little while back with an educated guess of his that XP ran slower because the SSD in the 8gb One was not supported well in XP. This was not confirmed and there was never any indication that it was slower running the native linux OS.

 

He was saying that the SSD in the Dell roughly equalled the HDD in the Acer, which makes sense given the performance specifications.

(the Acer SSD is much slower)

(boy though, that keyboard ... no F11? What on earth were they thinking.)

On a related A1 vs Mini9 note, I've been following the scene in Japan. The A1 has been very well received, though we only get the XP version here (as for all netbooks, noooo linux). Its been the number one selling notebook on kakaku.com pretty much every week since it was released over a month ago. The Eee 901 is its direct competition, its a price war with $100 of cuts over the last month, and they are both highly ranked in the user reviews. (I guess the Japanese don't mind teh small keyboard so much.) The Wind also seems to be doing well. All three are solid top 5 sellers. What is interesting is the hp mini note has completely dropped off the charts, can't break the top 100, despite being in the top 10 a month ago, and that the Dell is 50th, again despite being in the top 10 briefly on release. Brutal.

 

Has Dell even shipped any Ubuntu Mini 9's yet?

 

For me the keyboard is the #1 thing for me, and that Mini 9 keyboard is pants.
The Acer beats the Eee 901 hands down (IMHO) on the keyboard stakes as well.

That's why i went for the Aspire one in the end.