Yes, my point exactly to the comment above-- I swapped out Xp for Windows 7 RC on my Aspire Acer One (it took some squeezing- but there's good how-tos for the googling out there) and after some patience and tweaking- voila- a sleak, clean $299 Windows 7 machine, glass aero interface and all. And yes: it DOES run faster than Xp! The hardest part, I assure you, was figuring out how to make a bootable USB drive with the OS... the rest was cake- a long time in the oven for the compression, but cake nonetheless.

I'm afraid your wrong about netbooks and Windows 7.

My experience is that even the "pre-beta" editions of Windows 7 run better on a netbook than Windows XP.

Android is Linux based OS but kind of handicaped one. It can run ONLY Java apps converted to use Dalvik VM.
What it actually means, today it may be good for phones, but it can't compete with "normal" OS that can run programs written in any language including this of Andrroid. Shall I remind you that both Win and Linux have thousands of apps for any taste ready for use ? Think about it, on the netbook, people still need apps like messengers, browsers (not the only Chrome), Office, music players, movie players, torrent clients, photo browsing/editing software and many more.
Netbook is not phone, it's PC. Slow one, but still PC. With next generation of netbooks having dual cores (Intel's Atoms, VIA's Nanos and whatever AMD brings) inside with normal (probably Nvidia) graphics capable of HD playback, Android will not survive. As for Intel's support, it has Moblin that is mature Linux distro optimised for devices with limited resources, but scalable to unlimited resources.
There is no such thing as perfect OS. So every one will have it's share. I do hope Linux will become more popular since it can bring ARM and PowerPC (CellBE) likes to my PC instead of ugly x86.

There's no denying the fact that Google can deliver excellent user interfaces. All their web apps have excellent user interfaces, that are actually useful and intuitive and let you do things quickly. So I think if Google ventures in the OS arena, it will be a really good thing. We'll have a chance to get rid of Volish domination. I don't mind Google's domination. They aren't evil.
Though I'd really hate to buy a beta notebook. lol

My pre-transmeta Vaio C1 can't!

Ok, so those things have pitiful quantity of RAM etc, but I can get X, firefox and all the other stuff I need running just fine in a fairly stripped-back Slack installation.

Yes, so I am being contrary- though on some level, I really hope that Win7 doesn't suck- as there is no bloody way I will ever use Vista on my Win boxes, and XP is getting a bit long in the tooth now. If win 7 is any good, and it priced more sensibly, then I shall be cheering too..

That said, screw renta-windows. Also screw spending a three-digit amount on the OS. I'd just pirate Windows for my gaming machine then, and keep all the rest of the machines on Linux, MacOS and FreeBSD (as they are at present).

MS actually have an opportunity to not suck right now- the win 7 beta is surprisingly good, even on my eee901. Let's see if they deliver- for once.

I think you'll find virtually every netbook out there can run Windows 7, albeit the beta, just fine.