I own an Acer Aspire One (1.6Ghz Atom, 1GB RAM, 160GB hard drive). While the battery life isn't bad (5 hours), performance is poor and the whole thing is too sm

I own an Acer Aspire One (1.6Ghz Atom, 1GB RAM, 160GB hard drive). While the battery life isn't bad (5 hours), performance is poor and the whole thing is too small to do much work on. I've also had constant problems with audio, video, and wifi in Ubuntu. Windows XP works alright, but it's not useful for much more than browsing the web. I have been wanting something inexpensive- I used to think this way. Now I realize that it's not worth skimping on something you spend a significant fraction of your life using. Instead of the up-front cost, think of the amount you'll be paying per hour for the life of the machine. I'm going to use numbers that favor cheaper computers. Say you use it 4 hours a day and upgrade in 2 years. If you spend $500, you're paying about 17 cents per hour. $1500 is 50 cents per hour. If you're actually using the machine for development, you'll create many times that in value each hour, let's say $5. If you can improve your efficiency by 10% (50 cents/hour) by buying the $1500 machine, then it's worth buying. I've followed my own advice and bought a maxed-out 11" Macbook Air. I love it enough that I'm using it as my main development machine.