Tiny computer or huge Palm III PDA: $25

They aren't really, but 1000 hour battery life with a real keyboard has it's appeal to a certain crowd. Though, I say 1000 hours, I know some alpha smarts can hit that, I don't know about the Dana.

Also palm III on 160x560 screen is a bit of a curio.

It's the price. And the nerdery. Old cheap toys that are still useful today bring up memories. Especially when you have to hack them.

depends on what you want from a mobile device.

* faster text entry for writing a book? keyboard wins every time.

* less distractions while working on a project.

* runs for ages on a sniff of alkaline batteries.

* easily used outdoors in direct sun light?

* more rugged than a modern laptop?

i'd take one of these over an ipad anytime. but those are my requirements, not yours.

1) Extremely long battery life -- the newer Neo model can be used for months on a pair of AA batteries (see http://www.williamlanday.com/2009/05/29/things-i-love-the-al...)

2) Can run on commodity batteries -- AAs are cheap, user replaceable, and supplies are easily available worldwide

3) More rugged -- can be dropped without fear, no need for aftermarket cases/screen protectors

4) Keyboard included -- no need for aftermarket add-on, unlike most tablets

5) Cheap -- you can buy one for an order of magnitude less than the cost of a tablet, or even more less than the cost of a notebook

Which isn't to say devices like these are better for everyone than a tablet or a laptop would be, just that those devices don't automatically make these irrelevant for their niche.

I think I prefer my eMate 300, to be honest. The touchscreen is bigger. It's got good handwriting and drawing recognition. My keyboard is a bit too small though. And to be honest, I have no idea how to transfer data to or from it!

I was thinking RasberryPI duct-taped on a small keyboard (eg happyhacking) and some transreflexive display. Although I'm not sure if RPI would be exactly fitting for this kind of usage. Something which could drive the display directly would be more useful.

I would love something like this with a barebones Linux CLI distro and wifi. Just a keyboard, a terminal sized screen, and a connection to the Internet. And as I type this, I can't help but feel this might exist.

And the TRS-80 Model 100 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_100), which arguably pioneered the concept.

I wrote a novel on an Amstrad NC-100. It had a 1MB PCMCIA flash disk (from an Apple Newton!) and I saved a chapter at a time onto the disk (it only had 64KB of RAM) and I installed a new, clearer screen in it. Nice little machine!

this. beaming between palms and psions with irda was childs play compared to swapping via bluetooth on later devices. searching, pairing, authorising. and that's assuming the other recipient knows how to use bluetooth. these days i swap more info with qr codes than with bluetooth. convert info to qr code, have their barcode app read qr code. line of sight was so simple.

IrDA robust? Requiring line of sight is highly unreliable for mobile devices. I had my connection drop many times back in the days when I accidentally bumped my phone slightly off the laptops sensor cone.

And line of sight also reduces the applications. Hands-free headset would be impossible. Mouses too. GPS receivers impractical. I can't imagine in what way IrDA can be considered more useful than BT.