A few days ago I got myself an Asus EEEPC to experiment with it being in a role of a small server and a tiny internet kiosk. I installed Debian on it, but the process was not for the feint of heart, that's for sure. First of all the d-i font was messed up and all the menus overflowed the screen making it very hard to select anything. Additionally it seems very strange to me that there was a special d-i image made for EEEPC, but that image did not include built-in support for the computers wired or wireless network interfaces. That made my day highly problematic as I do not have an easy way to get to the Internet via a wired connection and the provided d-i image did not have enough files on it to finish the base install without networking.
This again made me think that the approach Ubuntu took is more favorable in most situations - have the install image boot a mostly functional system (it does not have to be X even) and then install from there. It actually feels more flexible than using the highly restricted d-i environment.
I will be looking to make a Debian rescue image designed for the EEEPC that you could dd onto a USB key, boot from and have a minimal Debian system with working ethernet, wifi and some basic rescue tools and a way to install a basic Debian system as well. That should make it much easier for people to get Debian onto their EEE PCs. I do hope that the Debian EEEPC project will improve as well.