I'm buying an Aspire One some time this month. Battery life should be 2-3 hours on the 3 cell, but you can get a 6 cell (and there are cheap-o clone 9 cell batteries on eBay) that should get you around 6-7 hours.
Not sure about the trackpad buttons being on the sides, but I suspect I'll get used to it soon enough.
I'm getting the 120Gb version, for the simple reason that unless you're paying a LOT of money, the small capacity SSDs are painfully slow. I have a 16Gb SSD in my Dell Insprion Mini 9 that is so slow that I would rather use my old Windows 95 machine.
Some SSDs benchmark at around 3-5Mb/sec write speed, compared with 70-90Mb/sec for a modern conventional (spinning) hard drive. If you do get the 120Gb version, just remember to treat it with care - spinning hard drives are very susceptable to damage from being moved around / mishandled while they're spinning.
Do bear in mind that these netbooks don't have the processing capability that small laptops have, but they're perfectly adequate for browsing the net, email, watching movies (copy movie to SD card or use an external USB drive).
I've heard a lot about the NC10 being a great machine, but it's above my price point. I can get the Aspire One for a little over £200 (also under £200, but they're out of stock), and that's the 1Gb/120Gb version, not the cut down 512Mb/8Gb version.
Windows vs. Linux.... well, I could work with Linux with no problems, but seeing as I have access to a corporate Windows license, I'm getting the Linux AA1 and putting Windows on it.
XP, of course!
