I'm not kidding. I'm running Matlab2008b and Agilent ADS2008 for

I also have installed Microsoft Office XP, Microsoft Visual Studio 2008, Ansoft Simplorer 7 (for power electronics and mixed signal sims). I'm going to install Adobe Photoshop CS and Micromedia Dreamweaver. Also planning to install RHEL 4.0 dual boot to run Cadence and Mentor Graphics for circuit design and sim. (I also have a Dell 600M notebook which has the same setup as above, only with a little bit more. Till now, I haven't noticed that the netbook is too much slower than my Dell.

The catch: I have upgraded the memory to 2G, and HD to 320GB (7200RPM). My netbook is ASUS Eee 1000HE.

So, from my experience, I think netbook is more than enough for a college student, only if he/she needs (not likely for a college student) much entensive graphical and calculation power. In my case, I'll run that kind of application on my Quad core desktop. A netbook is convenient but still pretty powerful to handle most of the needs.