It's nice to see Haiku making such good progress -- I feel that the existence of a user-friendly open source OS that's not a UNIX or Windows derivative is a good thing in itself, if only because it may be keeping alive some ideas that don't fit in the legacy-oriented Linux mold.

Maybe Haiku could become a nice netbook OS? Its single-user media focus certainly fits the bill. (Although Internet appliance computers were Be, Inc.'s swan song marketing attempt as well, so maybe they don't want to reopen that wound...)

I do think that Haiku needs some kind of forward-looking showcase project with a bit of gloss. Right now the superficial impression is that they've mostly catched up to a decade-old commercial project. Consider these screenshots of the first and latest release of this system...

BeOS Developer Release 4, from 1994: http://osnews.com/img/20869/screen2.gif

Haiku, from 2009: http://osnews.com/img/20951/1.png

(I prefer the 1994 version actually -- those tight pixel fonts and prominent grids of awesome 45°/30° icons must have something to do with it... The old light-grey look actually looks fairly contemporary alongside the Leopard and Windows 7 aesthetic.)