On my desk I can link mine up to a screen, keyboard mouse etc, and it operates much as the box on a desktop computer would.
To be fair I like the keyboard on my Acer Aspire One, but I have small hands and spent a long time finding a netbook with a keyboard that suited me
It's great for almost everything I need to do, but I don't ask it to do very much as my demands are mainly for writing, internet and office documents. I don't do much with graphics etc and I don't use it for video - although the screen is a perfect size for watching TV over the internet eg BBC iplayer.