I understand your pain... The x86 empire will always encounter a few rebel architectures. Luckily, there are new powerful weapons like the Atom-izer, and research on the Larrabee GPU (lots of simple x86s).
Most x86 CPUs emulate x86 code to keep the legacy alive... Long live the early 70's Datapoint/Intel 8008 instruction set!
Ok, maybe only the Vista kernel... Windows keeps mutating, becoming more like Microsoft Bob. Ironically, the Windows Server 2008 install has many of those stupid things turned off. Even so, it takes just too many tweaks to make it better.
On the Eee, the only good choice for most users is Easy Peasy. Ubuntu is badly pre-configured. I am running XP on my Eee, I can't recommend it because it requires nLite and a monstrous amount of additional tweaks make it SSD friendly. I hate Microsoft for not telling how they managed to make XP run on the XO laptop, fortunately there are many excellent Eee forums out there.
Work without a vision is slavery, Vision without work is a pipe dream, But vision with work is the hope of the world.
