I don't have an EeePC so I am probably not the best to compare, but at the $300 price point the Aspire One looks to smoke it. I can't imagine it has better build quality, the Aspire One is really solid. Here's the EeePC I found for the same price:
It has a 7" screen, 800MHz Celeron, 4GB SSD, etc. The specs aren't even close. I think screen is the most important, there is a huge difference between the 1024x600 that the Aspire One has and the 800x480 of the EeePC.
I can't comment on how it compares, but it is awesome.
I have one of the new 6 cell ones. I get 5 hours of battery life actually doing stuff on it (multiple programs open, etc)
For $300-ish I think it totally blows away the competition as well. I feel almost stupid that I just bought mine from Amazon now for 399, but it is worth it
It's a 10'' screen and thin like the Mac Air. But at $700, that's still quite the steal.
As a caveat, I just bought the new Macbook and I'm loving it. I think that this thing is really portable enough for me to take anywhere, and yet powerful enough for me to use as a desktop replacement. It's really the best value for the price. (Plus, for lack of a better way to describe it, OS X = ownage)
Thanks for your post, ashishk. I've been ogling the various netbooks/ultraportables/what-have-you, not wanting to spend gobs of money but also really wanting to have one, just for the sake of having one. This seems like a nice compromise between those two conflicting desires.
That's interesting, you must have been selected for a promo price or something fun. I checked through the AWS API and it's $325.99 there. But then from a free web proxy it showed as $299 and being fulfilled from a third party named MOBILESHARK. Maybe it's geography?
It's a deal at either price point, I bought one off Amazon last month for $329.99 (though while I got the same model, it was from Amazon directly so it qualified for Amazon Prime and I got free 2-day shipping).
Update: figured it out--I see the $299.99 pricepoint from MOBILESHARK when viewing Amazon.com while not signed in. That's curious. But since it has $16.99 shipping, there's not much of a difference (it's free from Amazon).
http://www.buy.com/prod/acer-aspire-one-aoa110-1955-1-6ghz-5...
I have this machine and love it. Hell of a deal.