One of the worst cards for Linux is the Intel poulsbo 500GMA chipset, because Xorg is not suporting it anymore. It is safe to say that AAO is NOT a Linux compatible laptop. It will work with most distros but only with 1024x768 resolution. This makes the small 11.6" screen almost useless. Nevertheless the 1366x768 is can be tweaked and made to work! This is good because Linux makes a much better job of exploiting the scarce resources on AAO than Windows XP.
In particular a slim Linux distro like Archlinux:
I installed Arch (With Gnome/gdm)and installed this from AUR. Then I "followed" this readme I listed the possible resolutions on the lap with
Take a close look at Mode 49! I restarted X and it worked! The problem now of course was to make it happen everytime because the resolutions is reset on every boot - what to do? I put a line in /etc/rc.local I is necessary to write the solution to the Bios before x starts:
Manjaro 64bit on the main box -Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67GHz and nVidia Corporation GT200b [GeForce GTX 275] (rev a1. + Centos on the server - Arch on the laptop. "There are no stupid questions - Only stupid answers!"