I have a netbook, laptop and desktop.
My netbook sees about 75% of my computing use, with the desktop getting about 24% and the laptop about 1%.
Basically most of the Intel Atom netbooks are fine running the applications that I like to use, and the newer AMD ones are a fair bit more powerful as well. I have used many brands of them, but the two best brands IMO are MSI and Asus. Both use reasonable compatible hardware so replacing the OS is easy (Windows 7 Starter won't even let you change your desktop background, and XP sp3 while acceptable isn't common anymore).
MSI is probably the better of the two, I use an older MSI Wind u100 and here is why it beats my wifes Asus EEE pc: The Wind has an extra ram slot, so it can be upgraded, the Wind come with a restoration CD at no extra cost in the box, and the Wind has a easily replacable wireless card internally. MSI however, seems to be abit more expensive.
I will say however, that I don't use Windows on either netbook, Debian Linux works more than fine, and I can get all of my cool KDE applications (even though I use Openbox in place of Kwin). Windows 7 starter had the clear issue of not being able to change your desktop background (there are ways around most of these limitations), or many other settings unlike Window 7 Ultimate on my desktop (dual boot with Linux) . And Windows XP sp3 was using nearly 300mb of ram at idle, this is unacceptable to me, as I have got KDE running in 107mb of ram at idle on my machine (though that is kinda an accomplishment.)
I use an external burner, but I don't usually bring it with me. If I really want to burn things on the go I will take my laptop, but for most everything except emulating my playstation games on the go I prefer my netbook. Libreoffice, VLC, and IceApe, Ktorrent, and Comix are my most used applications, and they all seem to run just fine on my netbook, though Gimp will run quicker on my laptop.
