Our local WalMart is selling these Acer emachines for $228. I'm seriously considering buying this, even though I have to pay the abhorrent Microsoft tax. This unit appears to be the same thing Radio Shack is selling as a netbook Aspire for $100 more. (all the same hardware inside, only apparent dif. is emachine label)

What I want to know is:

1) Which distro's will recognize all the hardware during install? (including wireless and webcam)

2) Is it difficult to get a usb cd/dvd device to function with this netbook?

I just bought one of these and now have it dual booting Slackware 13.0 and Ubuntu 9.10. So far I think everything works out of the box for Ubuntu except the NIC. It requires an updated driver as it does in Slackware as well. At this point I've tested Ubuntu more but I do know that wireless works out of the box in Slackware 13 as well.

I used an external CDROM connected via USB to install the distros.

I bought one of these at the same time I bought an Acer Aspire One D250 for my girlfriend. They are identical except my eMachines has a 250 GB drive and her AAO only has a 160 GB drive.

Hope this helps.

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