I use my 1018 to take notes when I visit clients as I'm a Royal British Legion Welfare Case Worker. Mine has 2GB ram and a 250GB HDD.
It runs Windows 7 basic with all Windows updates, Kaspersky Internet Security2014, some Office 2010 programmes (Word, PowerPoint, Excel) and has my Epson Wi-Fi printer drivers installed. The latest K-Lite codec pack is also installed and I'm able to watch all movies when I travel, irrespective of the codec used to compress them and I have no starts & stops which some people seem to have. The battery lasts for many hours by the way.
I of course, have a Win 5 3rd gen Dell laptop with 8GB RAM which I use as well and my desktop unit which is an AMD Phenom II x 6 core with a 250GB SSD drive and 8GB RAM.
If people would bear in mind the small size of the duel-core Atom cpu, then waiting the odd very few seconds for a programme to load then there is no problem.
I don't have any start-up services disabled and mine runs just fine. If people are unhappy with the 1018 then get a bigger laptop! My Dell runs better than I ever expected but then I've had computers since the days of the 8088 cpu and DOS 3.2! Yes, I build and refurbish computers for my Royal British Legion Branch members in Northumberland.
Ken Driver