Hi,
Just a quick update on this.
I finally succumbed to temptation and bought one of these a week or two 
ago, mainly for use with an XP laptop, but now having plugged it into the 
Eee 701 it seems to work fine.
I plugged it in and used the GUI network connection icon to create a new 
network connection, selecting the appropriate options from the menus and 
was up and running in 5 minutes.
The XP software provided with the device gives you info on signal type and 
strength and lets you send and receive SMS messages from the device which 
I've not found a way to do in Linux yet but as a wireless modem it just 
works, at least on the Eee.
   Andy