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well what would you be useing it for takeing notes in class? writing papers and web browsing?
there are + for both the os and hdd, im pretty sure if you go with the ssd you will get more out of your battery but at the expence of stroage.
As for the os it really just whitch one do you feel more comfortable with both are great OS's.
linux bening opensourse you will fine a lot for free programs on the web,
but if it was me i would pick the one with xp, if you get tired of xp and want to try linux you can allways download what ever distro you would like and install it on the Eee what. most of the linux distros are extreamly easy to use and configure and there are plenty of experienced linux users here so if you want to go the linux way there are many people that can help and answer your questions

well if your just doing the basic stuff then eather drive would be fine and most ssd now are extreamly fast
I belive someone posted a guide here on the forms about dual booting windows and opensuse

I purchased the one with windows xp + ssd. My first impression was that it was lighter than I expected. The battery weighs more than the laptop itself. Since it is windows xp it took less than 45 seconds to boot up as opposed to the 5 min boot up on my core 2 duo laptop running on vista. In terms of battery life, it runs for around 7 hours with wifi on. I was able to install and play WoW on it..The video card is pretty decent but not high end. Lol this laptop is great. i would highly recommend this to any college student.

I knew about the dell inspiron mini 9 before I brought the Eee. I was comparing them before I decided. Sure the Mini 9 can be as cheap as $349 thats with less storage(4GB), half the amount of ram(512MB) and Linux. If you were to upgrade to 16 GB and 1GB ram with windows xp it would cost around the same as the Eee pc. When you weigh both laptops with their battery and ac adapters..the Eee weighs around 3lbs total and the Mini 9 weighs 6lbs. The Eee comes with a 6 cell battery. Whereas, the Mini 9 comes with a 4 cell. They both have the same integrated videocard. Eee's video card is 128MB and the Mini 9's is only 64MB.

Dell Inspiron Mini 9 - $449
Windows XP Home Edition SP3; 1.6GHz Intel Atom; 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz; 64MB Mobile Intel 945 Express; STEC 16GB SSD.

Asus Eee PC 901 - $499
Windows XP Home Edition SP2; 1.6GHz Intel Atom; 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM 400MHz; 128MB Mobile Intel 945 Express; 12GB Phison solid-state drive.

I decided to go with the Eee even though it has less storage than the Mini because I can always change it to a larger ssd. But the integrated graphics cannot be changed. Oh, and the Mini 9 has a glossy display, making it kind of hard to see in a well lighted room. If you add bluetooth and built-in camera to the mini 9 it would cost the same as the Eee.

 I was just reading this months "PCMagazine" , and came across the MSI Wind , seems like a decent notebook, w/ the 80 Gig Hdd , it's $480 .