If I were you I'd try and get a reallllly cheap crappy netbook for now and hold out until later. No point spending your entire budget on a netbook that will drop in price in a matter of months or even weeks. Apparently there are people that let go of their EEEPC 701s for $100 CAD all over the place ever since BoM started handing em out. Chances are the price won't drop drastically in a few months time, and you can always ditch it for $50 later on or something. Net loss of $50, much better than having a netbook that will drop to $150 or $200 and lose a lot more. I guess if you don't have another computer, having a slow netbook might be problematic, but it isn't as if you could game on either of em.