First Impressions of a New Netbook
I'm doing, and want to keep doing, work while I'm on the road and travelling. The laptop I usually use was really meant to be a portable desktop and when I bought it I wasn't concerned with size or battery life to any extent. However, battery life is now a major issue. In addition, if you sit with it on your lap for any length of time the processor gets so hot it will almost burn a blister on your leg.
I thought about the iPad but it is inconvenient for typing and it doesn't have a webcam built in (yet), so my real option is another laptop. Since I wanted great battery life I decided on a netbook so this is being typed, and constantly corrected, on a Toshiba NB 305-440BL. 
The price is right on the machine, about $350 plus another $50 to upgrade to 2GB RAM. It comes with a 250 GB hard drive, plenty of space for anything I'm going to do with it. The only other addition, which wasn't absolutely essential, was an external DVD drive. I bought it in case I needed to load programs and found an aftermarket one for about $50.
A better review will come later, but my first impressions are 1) I love the battery life, 8 hours out of the box without charging it myself. This was, of course, at the lowest power setting, but it looks like I'll get at least 5 hours with the screen on the brightest setting (bright enough for these old eyes to see) and running an external 3g card for internet access, and 2) the keyboard is giving me fits. It has pretty responsive keys but you have to strike them a little more firmly than I am used to and I keep either missing the A key and hitting the S by mistake or it just doesn't register the stroke on the A. Not sure if it is me or a problem with the keyboard. More on that later as well.
However, my initial review and rating is 4.5 out of 5 stars. I have always been a Toshiba fan and this low priced alternative for us road warriors is great.
