You can do that with Win7 as long as your netbook has an Excel compatable program to read them. Suggest you download and install OpenOffice, it is a free program and is totally compatable with MS Office Word, Excel, Access etc. Check out Acer too

I have the Acer Aspire One netbook and love it, have had it a few months now and it has been working perfectly for me for my needs. It does have xp on it. I did put Open Office on mine so I have a suite of office programs. I definitely recommend the Acer. Also very high ratings are on the MSI wind netbook. Most all will have the Intel Atom processor, you want to make sure you do not get the VIA processor it is not rated as highly. Mine has the 3 cell battery which has been fine for me since I use it at home mostly anyway.
Buy.com has a great price on the MSI at $269 and free shipping
MSI Wind U100-013US 10" Netbook Intel Atom

I have seen a lot of the black friday sales which will include netbooks for good prices.
I got mine at walmart.com

the main things to check are which battery it comes with 3 or 6 cell, the processor, most come with pretty much the same memory and hard drive size. Most come with xp but some do come with linux on them.

this is the link to the one I bought, it was one of the earlier models so has the smaller screen size.
Acer Pink 8.9" Aspire One AOA150-1178 Netbook PC with Intel Atom Processor N270

I personally would pick the windows xp versions over the windows 7 starter OS because the 7 starter version is extremely limited, or try to find one that has a better version of windows 7 on it like home premium. Here is an article discussing the versions and limitations.
Some versions of Windows 7 worth it, others not
but since you stated you wanted xp that should not be an issue for you since there are many available with xp.

check out some of the sales
http://blackfriday.gottadeal.com/index.php

Thank you genes and raven. Once again, you all are always so helpful. :)
Pam

Pam, I have an Asus EeePC 1000H with XP and 80Gb hard drive and it has always fulfilled its role perfectly but, as always, everything is a compromise.

Below are some of my observations:

Playing music - good for video and music files from the hard drive and on-line. Also plays mp3s when connected to an external mp3 player or usb stick. No built in CD/DVD player so you might need an external one.

Photos - excellent results displaying with Faststone Viewer and editing with Photo Filtre.

Excel - Excel works on the installed Open Office so long as you don't use macros (OO uses a different language). The same may apply to Word. I removed OO and installed MS Office 2000 (which is a lot smaller).

Internet browsing works perfectly but comes with IE7 which isn't my 1st choice. (No problem installing another one but I don't want to waste too much hard drive space. The Google based Iron browser is smaller than Firefox and works o.k. - and isn't so nosey as Chrome.)

This type of computer is a wide but low screen format and I find it tiresome having to continually scroll up and down to read the whole of each page when browsing. There are a number of screen settings but none are ideal for me. The compressed screen option that displays the whole page is too small for my eyes. A 12 inch laptop has practically the same width keyboard and screen and avoids the need to scroll - but they are usually much more expensive and aren't so convenient when travelling.

The built in Bluetooth is perfect for connecting to a wireless mouse or GPS receiver without having a dongle sticking out the side when travelling. (DON'T let CCleaner delete "ActiveX and Class Issues" otherwise Bluetooth will stop working!!!)

WiFi networking works perfectly.

My Asus with its 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor and slower hard drive is, at times, noticeably slower than both my 2GHz laptop and my old 1.3GHz desktop so there are the occasional delays of a second or two - but nothing worth worrying about.

Colin

Thanks, Colin. I'm glad to have your observations. I did go ahead and order the 1105HA-P. My regular desktop is good, so I can do the big jobs with it. :)

I was especially interested to hear what you had to say about Firefox as I do prefer it for browsing. And I'd like to have Thunderbird as my mail program. I'm not sure how to estimate their sizes and do you think I should just stick with IE and use my dsl provider's email online?

I'd be interested in how you went about setting it up out of the box...did you get rid of anything pre-installed? Install different security programs? I use AVG, Malwarebytes AntiMalware, SpywareBlaster, Super Anti-Spyware and Zone Alarm on my desktop, those were the programs I thought I'd install.

I'm glad to hear about the photos. That's one the main reasons I wanted it for traveling. I love having the card slot right there.

I have an old copy of Windows 2000...I suppose you have an external hard drive to install it? If that's needed, I'll just download Open Office.

I'm looking forward to getting it. Let me know what you think about FF and Thunderbird. Thanks again for your input.
Pam

Pam do you mean Office 2000 and not Windows? Either way you do not need an external CD/DVD player because you can copy the files onto a thumb drive to install on the new computer.

Pam, I am trying to remember my initial cleanup / setup procedure on the Asus because it was well over a year ago but it was along these lines (bear in mind that I delete files/programmes and edit the registry to eliminate as much rubbish as possible - which I don't recommend others to do!):

Turn off Windows auto updates to stop it jumping online before you are ready.

First priority - remove Norton before you go online otherwise it will auto-install. I definitely downloaded Norton's Uninstall programme from their site using my desktop computer and a usb stick. I can't remember the order in which I did the cleanup but it included run uninstaller; delete all Norton, Symantec and Liveupdate files, folders and registry entries.

Normal Second priority (not sure if these were on the Asus) - remove trial versions of MS Office 2007 / Works.

Turn on Asus Windows Firewall.

Using desktop computer, get latest AVG onto usb stick and install on Asus. Asus will go online but will be protected.

Install all your usual security programmes.

Turn off Windows Firewall once your own is running.

Turn on Windows updates and choose which ones to install (e.g not IE8???).

Install Firefox, Thunderbird and anything else you want - there is plenty of room. (I use my Asus as a truly portable photo storage and video editing tool so I rapidly fill up my hard drive.)

Emails on more than one computer always pose questions about which is the best way to do everything - security, synchronising, duplicates, which copy is in the master file, etc. The Asus, being small and very attractive to thieves when travelling, poses even more questions because email is a direct route to all your personal details. Even if you are exceptionally careful then e.g. your Bank's name together with the account number etc. that they sent you using their secure email when you signed up will probably still be in there.

Possibly the simplest/safest??? way with the Asus would be to use your ISP's webmail and only download essential emails onto the Asus and continue to use your desktop computer to store all of your emails as you do at present.

I had forgotten that there is a card slot on the Asus! Don't forget to use the "Safely Remove" feature to avoid destroying the card (been there, done that - 3 times!).

I haven't looked at your Asus spec but mine came with Open Office installed but, having used MS Office 2000 (not Windows 2000) for so long, I much prefer it but I had to buy an external CD/DVD drive to install it.

Colin

the one thing that most people have to say about all of the netbooks is how bad the sound is, I have that problem on mine also so I just picked up a little pair of earbuds at Biglots for 5 bucks and use them it I need to really listen to anything and with them it is fine.

I use firefox on mine and have it configured exactly as my desktop is, I use xmarks so all of my bookmarks were on it immediately when I did a synchronize. Put all my add ons too of course with Adblock plus being first after xmarks.
I took the McAfee off using their removal tool then a search for remnants, installed AVAST, I did my windows updates in batches since there were several, I would do 4 or 5 then reboot and do more that way if something went wrong I knew which ones to remove. I did restore points all along the way before I started of course then after each install of anything new so I had plenty of restore places to return to should anything go wrong.
I have not had to have a cd/dvd drive I use a flash drive but I happen to have an external cd drive, I prefer using a little thumb drive.

Yes, thank you owbist for reading my mind...it's Office 2000. . :) I will get a thumb drive.

And thank you bee4mee and raven for all your help. I'll print out your notes and work on the processes you've mentioned. If I can't find answers to any questions by doing some searching for previous posts, I might be popping back up again.

As always...I appreciate all the help I get on this forum.
Pam

I bought a netbook that was defective called Asus and the only option was to leave a message. Called two times without a call back 4 months after I retured the netbook tech support called at midnight.

tumblenweed....uh oh...that doesn't sound good. I'm sorry you had a bad time.

I made the decision for the Asus 1005HA based on the reviews. I hope it goes all right. :)

Tumblenweed - my feelings about this kind of treatment are the same as yours.

Sadly, similar standards of customer service seem to apply to many "trusted and reputable" companies these days.

The Register, which is generally considered as a reputable source of techy reading, recently carried an interesting article. If the reported items were contaminated due to customer abuse then fair enough, but if the article is accurate then it also shows the lengths that companies now have to go to in order to reduce customer service costs. ahumm

Colin

Here is a link that might be useful: Apple allegedly voids smokers warranties

pfmastin, I sure hope your experience goes well!

Colin, I don't smoke :-) What really ticked me off was the netbook should have never been kept on the market they knew about the problem with connecting. Only thing I could do with it was play games. I'm not a game person :-(

Tumblenweed, just out of interest, do you still have the model number?

Sadly, I too have connection and speed problems - dozens of times each day but mine are all down to a rubbish telco and ISP and there is no alternative where I live.

Funny enough they have just sent me an online Customer Satisfaction questionnaire. It took a while to get the answers back to them - but I persevered! TalkTalk's their name.

Colin

Colin, Lots of helpful people here why don't you start a new post about your problems and see what comes up. Other than your telco and ISP a quick search came up with router problems. HTH

Tumblenweed, Thanks for your concern but as I have drifted off topic from the original post I will close it now, but will just explain that TalkTalk's engineer's test equipment proved the fault was/is not on my premises and his test computer continually lost broadband connection the same as mine do.

Colin