Yes. The easy way is to use an external CD-ROM. I didn’t have one so I had to use a more complicated process that involves putting the windows XP install on a flash drive. It is a more complicated process, but it works.
The trade-off for using XP instead of Linux is reduced battery life (I haven’t tested it thoroughly, but it seems like under windows I am getting about 3 hours of video playback vs 3.5 on Linux) and a much longer boot time.
There’s a very important distinction to be made here: this model uses a solid state drive, not a hard drive. The solid state drive, or SSD, doesn’t use a traditional SATA connector or IDE. It is more of a card, and I believe it is mini-PCI, though I could be mistaken. You can upgrade the SSD, but it will cost you: a 32GB SSD runs almost the cost of this netbook. There doesn’t appear to be space for a hard drive (I took mine apart when I first got it) and there is definitely not a connection for it. I’m not saying it is impossible, just unlikely.
I have this exact model, and everything is great, except the SSD is slow like whoa.
I run Ubuntu on it because the Xandros distro that came with it is fairly crappy. Ubuntu 9.04 has a couple of quirks on this hardware, one of them being that you cannot toggle the wireless, another being that you cannot toggle the tap-to-click on the touchpad, another that the wireless is sometimes a bit unstable, as well as there is a bug in the sound driver in which when the audio is muted, audio playback causes a crackle from the speakers. This is not the Apple user’s portable. It does not always just work.
As a pro, though, you get a 45 second boot time to a usable, fully-loaded desktop! Much nicer than my laptop.
Why you should get this: lightweight, 2.5hr battery life is better than your old laptop, portable, given the right distro–fast boot times
Why you should not get this: keyboard is smaller than a normal one and is harder to type on, processor does not perform like a 1.6GHz of any other model, not really useful for anything beyond internet browsing/email checking/taking notes in class. Do not buy expecting it to run games. It can barely handle Flash. Don’t put Windows on this thing.
That said, if you use it like I do (browsing, note-taking) you will probably like it. It definitely is a fun toy.
The one on regular woot has a Celeron processor. This one has an Atom.
This one has the Atom 1.6GHz CPU, the one on woot is the older 900MHz Celeron.
This one is better 
The one on Woot! has a different processor and half as much memory, although you do get a choice of colors and it’s $20 less.
If the storage were better, I’d go for this - but I don’t want to spend a lot of my savings upgrading to what I’d consider useable, especially with the small keyboard. So close.
You must be very good looking. I know I hate when the web cam goes off. No webcam is a plus for many trust me.
From Newegg … SSD 16G|SUPER TALENT FPM16GRSE RT 1 $53.00
This one has an Intel Atom 1.6gHz processor, while the one on woot.com has a 900mHz Celeron. This one also has 1GB of RAM as opposed to the woot.com 512MB. Worth the extra IMHO.
I did some tests of my own and found that ssd drives are not any faster than normal hard drives. So the myth of ssd drives being faster “is all a lie I tell you A LIE!”
Well, I was referring to the 32GB ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820609406 ) but the price dropped since last time (Julyish I think). $89 now.
Definitely would be worth it if I had the cash.
Got this on woot 3 weeks ago or so.
SSD is not only small, it’s horribly slow. You’ll notice system hanging every time something writes to disk.
The keyboard is tiny, and a few keys are too slim even for my small fingers to rest on well.
The small SSD space means that you will not be able to hibernate the system (requires swap to be >= to RAM). This is OK, because boot times should be pretty fast.
I don’t know about that. I imagine it is at least better on battery life. Since traditional drives spin and would thus require more power.
SSDs have the potential to be much faster, and the expensive drives in larger form factors do run faster than the standard HDD.
However, this is pretty much the cheapest and cruddiest SSD available on the market.
Does it come in purple? Or whiblurple? All-white is too… apple.
Excellent value in comparison to the one on regular woot!
There are nice touchscreen kits available for this for about $60 … mine is on its way.
I got this one last time it was offered. I put the 32GB SSD from my eeepc 1000 in and Hackintoshed it. Then I put the $89 32GB into the 1000. It is definitely faster than the stock SSD.
The 900A is OSX and eeebuntu NBR. The 1000 is unbuntu NBR and Windows 7.
It’s a great machine to learn on.
It’s not entirely white. It’s covered in very thin light grey stripes that you won’t notice in the photos.
All this baby needs to rock is a better distro of Linux on it. I installed eeebuntu on mine with the stock hard drive and it works fine. Just go download unetbootin and whatever Linux distro you want, use unetbootin to make the iso bootable on a 1 gig usb drive, boot from the usb drive and install. All you people who “have” to have Windows don’t really know what you’re missing! Almost every Linux distro has better features and more built-in software than any version of Windows. Don’t fear change!
That important?
Useful reply, thanks. I work as a grease monkey so even mostly white is out since my fingers like to retain liquified dead dinosaurs long after I’m done working and scrubbed them. Of course, I could always paint it…