My take on these little netbooks is that they're nice and compact and certainly up to the task of image capture, guiding, mount control etc. If you're taking them out in the field, they're handy for that.
One downside is definitely the screen size. Trying to run applications where big windows are necessary is painful. Some applications won't even run or install on them because the maximum resolution is too small. There's ways around that, but not convenient to use. The screen size is fine for PHD, EQMod, Nebulosity and the other image capture stuff I mostly use. It was a little small when I tried to use Bahtinov Grabber and Nebulosity at the same time because they both need to be on top at same time.
Other downside is number crunching applications like DSS and Nebulosity when it's image processing/stacking (not just image capture). Wouldn't try to do any image calibrations or stacking on them. Can do it, but it takes aaaaages.
If I was fortunate enough to have my own observatory, I would use a full sized laptop of desktop PC for the screen size and I could also process my images there. Plus, if I could afford an observatory, I could afford a slightly bigger notebook
If I was travelling out to a dark site once a month (lucky me!) just to capture images and taking them back home to process, a netbook might be much more compact/convenient.
Another application they might be convenient is actually at the mount then remote desktop access them. Again, just used for image capture.