I am interested in purchasing a netbook to do field research in another country. My hardware specifications for the nebtook are fairly basic:

• Be rugged enough to survive a bit of wear and tear
• Fairly fast processing (the ability to upgrade from 1GB of RAM to 2GB)
• A battery life of longer than 6 hours
• At least a 10 inch screen
• A decent camera for Skyping

However, I am mainly concerned about being able to do basic statistical analysis in conjunction with R

• Be able run a Spreadsheet program to do basic data input (like Excel or Open Office)
• Use R to do basic data analysis (Regression, some simulation (nothing crazy), data cleaning, and some of the functionality)
• Word Processing (Word or Open Office)

Do you have any suggestions on which models or brands my fit my needs? Some of the models I am considering:

• Samsung NB-30

• Toshiba NB 305

• Asus Eee PC 1005HA

• Lenovo S10-2

Does anyone use R on a netbook, and if so do you have any recommendations on how best to optimize it? This article from Lifehacker mentions some OS. Anybody use these in conjunction with R? Any help would be much appreciated.