All the netbooks I've tried (and I've tried several, we test our company's software on them) have been slow, but I agree that there must be some snappy ones somewhere. Also agreed that Linux probably runs much quicker on them than Windows does, since it's not as much of a hog. Unfortunately my company is publishing software for the Windows OS, and I'm sure Dignan is supporting computers with the Windows OS too, and that's where he's running into trouble.

Anyway, I'll bet he's seeing something like the IDE or SATA controller driver being incorrect, or being in "legacy" mode or whatever they call it when you don't have the latest drivers.