well thats because you haven't done your research properly.
1/2gb ram 600mhz is more than fast enough:S
back in the sp1 xp days you could run a 550mhz 256ram machine well quick bootup wise etc.obviously I'm not going to be running skins and visual cheese so it'll be smooth.
if it can run halo ce with low settings it must be more than up to the job tbh.
let alone custom linux os's aswell. also mac seems to run nice if you optimise a slightly older distro... or so i red.so the options look promising.plus I've seen it running xp/vista and the speed is well nice on a 1gb ram'd spec machine... plus the fact you could have like 16-32gb sd card and a 16-32gb pen drive either wired up inside or plugged in... then 8gb built in ssd its just sick for its size man
or wire up a touch screen/bluetooth.the things got so much going for it and so cheap.just have a proper look around on some sites and you want one