I have an old Asus-8G. Windows XP runs really slow on it. I installed XP for VPN/work access. It constantly sits there and the disk I/O goes. I've been considering wiping it and going back to the default Linux install.
I really hope that they would allow previous generations to change to Android.
I have the same setup. But for me, XP runs okay on it.
I disabled automatic updates and the spyware removal tool, though. No antivirus either. I also use many "Portable Apps" (http://portableapps.com/ ), so relatively little is really installed on the machine.
How has XP gotten so much slower over the past few years? The machines out on its release were Pentium IIIs and very early (crap) Pentium 4s, and yet it struggles to run on modern netbook hardware.
Early netbooks lagged in performance and battery life. For example, my Asus EEE 8G performed about the same as my 4+ year old, battery-doesn't-work Dell Inspiron (same or close 900mhz Celeron CPU).
The newer Atom CPUs apparently are slower than the Celeron CPU but they have better performance/watt (better battery life characteristics).
I really hope that they would allow previous generations to change to Android.