Laptop and big lump open in Gnome, under Debian.
Last time I used Gnome (admittedly a while ago), you could add a program to be run at startup in System -> Preferences -> Sessions -> Startup Programs tab or maybe System -> Preferences -> Startup Applications something like that. You could add a line to run your favourite text editor at startup with a particular text file loaded: gedit ~/mytextfile.txt This would cause gedit to run with that file loaded, every time you logged into Gnome.
Eee opens in Asus Tellytubbies desktop.
Not sure I can help with that, as I don't have one. Isn't the Eee operating system a custom version of Xandros which runs IceWM? Looks like some useful info here: http://wiki.eeeuser.com/howto:startupscript Sounds like you need to put the same sort of text editor launch command in ~/.icewm/startup, though you'll have to experiment with it to be sure. Peter.