[Hampshire] Which Netbook?

Hi all,

I am considering getting a netbook for my wife for Christmas. She is
actually quite keen to learn Linux. We were recently in a shop with
the Asus Eee PC 901 on display and though it was running WinXP I
suggested she have a look. My main worry was that she wouldn't like
the smaller keyboard or display, but she really liked it a lot in the
short time we had a play (the constant attentions of the sales guy
eventually drove us away).

I have not really been paying much attention to the netbooks since I
can't really warrant one for myself and didn't think my wife would be
so interested but now that has changed - just in time for Christmas!

A quick look on Amazon and I am surprised at the number of different models.

So can anyone recommend which model to buy? I can see there is both
the 901 and the 1000, maybe others. Some have SSD and some HDD. How do
they compare? What about battery life, same for both? Do they all have
the same amount (1GB) of RAM? The price does not seem to be all that
different. Should I be considering any other make/models?

She will use the machine mostly for writing reports, doing
presentations, email and of course web browsing. Is there a benefit to
swapping out Xandros and using Ubuntu? Since my wife has not used
either of them I doubt it matters from the "previous experience" point
of view.

Thanks
Rich