Second Update
2008.11
I've had the Mini-Note for almost half a year now, I still am very happy with it.
The glare on the screen started to really bother me. To that end, I purchased a
NuShield anti-glare film. As with the 2133 experience in general, it's been mostly fantastic! (I'll post a pic shortly.)
If you buy one, be sure to ask for the following dimensions: 210mm x 130mm. The original film shipped to me was 214 x 120 mm. These dimensions were given to NuShield by a customer. I found them to be too short and a bit too wide. I contacted NuShield about this and they happily shipped me a replacement 210 x 130 mm replacement for free! It's a perfect fit, with a bit of room around all sides. (Most of these films have to be installed directly on the LCD. It can fit around the 2133 because of the plexiglass over top.
The film does the job brilliantly. It's still a bit worse for glare than a traditional matte finish, but I'm not constantly staring at myself now when I use the laptop. Why these glossy screens are so popular is beyond me.
I'm still using Ubuntu 8.04.1. I find that kernel 2.6.24-19 works perfectly. I upgraded to -21 and a few things were a bit off, so I'm sticking with what works for now. I have no immediate plans to move to 8.10. I have seen nothing compelling with this release and 8.04.1 works perfectly for me.
Since buying the 2133, I've had a chance to play with Dell's Inspiron Mini 9, the Acer AspireOne and the EeePC 900. I think the best machine for the dollar is the AspireOne, but I'm sticking with the 2133. It was more expensive and doesn't have the Intel Atom CPU, but the keyboard and build of the machine are both a cut above the competition. The Mini 9 is interesting, but it only comes with SSDs and has a very odd keyboard layout. (Specifically, the tilde is only accessible through the Fn key, the apostrophe is a line lower than it should be, and the F keys are overloaded to the number keys. Very bad for mc and touch typing.) The key size on the Mini 9 is great and it's much smaller than the 2133. Think of it as a higher-end EeePC.