For a lot of things I feel I don't need to run a modern IDE. Gcc + a text editor does fine, or something light like Qt Designer. This is why I explicitly added

For a lot of things I feel I don't need to run a modern IDE. Gcc + a text editor does fine, or something light like Qt Designer. This is why I explicitly added "if you don't use eclipse" :-) You have to be a bit creative with resources, if you expect a full high-profile dev machine you're indeed not well-off with a netbook. And indeed, finding one with decent battery life can be a bit of a challenge. And yes, $1000 versus $350 matters for a lot of people, we're not all silicon valley rock stars. Also if you, for example, use the device in risky/dirty/etc environments, you'd usually want to settle with something easily replacable.