Well if any laptop will do, you may not even want a netbook at all. I only assumed you wanted to know about EeePcs since this thread is about EeePCs. There's a very active thread about laptops in general here:
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=51474
If battery life is your priority, then the Atom is probably your best option. However, it is under powered for cpu-intensive things like compiling, video encoding, etc....