I too got an A1 xp 120GB machine yesterday, 7/31 in Taiwan, about NT 15000, US$500 (tradeshow discount).
Amazing battery life right out of box (80% charge and ran like 5 hours while I installed a few apps and tried hooking up to WiFi at home, cafes and stores). And stayed cool all this time. Even the air out of the vent feels much cooler than usual. Don't have a software measuring temp but my hands/laps give it a A+. 6 cell definitely adds more weight, and making it a little bit off balanced while holding in 1 hand. The eee and WIND 10" feels a little bit better balanced (they are thinner and wider), but keyboard is definitely no worse than eee 1000H, and better than MSI WIND (subjective).
Not a whole lot of junkware on it (thank you ACER), but MS still got their trial Office 2007 on it. What's kind of weird is, the IE starting homepage is not even ACER or MSN, but Yahoo? Some of the shareware on it (like MSN Messenger) are of the real old vintage (as old a when xP was first released). Anyhow, this may be all different depending on where you are.
No xP recovery disk, but guess it's built into the system RAM or something? Or maybe I need to burn a recovery disk? WIll know more once I hook up an external DVD burner. Hooked up a few peripherals, and xP took them without any hitches.
Performance wise it runs xP and apps about same speed as a Pentium 4 3.0MHz, minor lags running IE and downloading things, probably because I am used to PC's with fast HD, big RAM and running Vista. But if I am in a plane or waiting at a cafe, this speed is totally acceptable. Sorry I haven't bombard it with serious apps (Adobe, AutoCAD, etc.) but don't think I ever will (screen too small for serious graphic work). Play videos and music OK and not noticeable lag, but speakers are kind of weak.
Not sure why but I had hard time hooking up to my WiFi router at home. I ended up making my router OPEN, then resecure it again. Did not have this problem at stores or cafes.
I was told by the ACER reps that they won't have enough A1's for all the pre-orders especially on certain colors (wanted white but got blue instead). So unless you are one of the first preorders you probably will have to wait even longer. I got mine so quick because ACER kept a small stocks just to hype up at Taipei Computer Show, but probably won't have enough to last until this weekend.