I've shot numerous rolls of 120 through my Hawkeye, spooling onto a 620 reel. While the image quality leaves something to be desired the camera itself is beautifully designed and so dirt simple that you never have to worry about anything malfunctioning. Folding cameras are technically superior but quite fiddly and prone to issues with lubricants turning to glue.
I have a single-core model from 2003 that I pulled from a trash heap. I still use it for scanning film and anything else that Adobe CS2 can handle. I also have a OS X tiger partition to run classic applications on. Great computer/space-heater ;)
As far as 35mm systems it's pretty much just Leica and Nikon at the moment, though I would imagine that Nikon is close to discontinuing their F6 flagship soon. Thankfully many 35mm cameras from the 70s and 80s are engineering masterpieces that will likely keep functioning well into the second half of this century. I just hope that companies will continue making film stocks for them.
I might start with 'The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby' which is a collection of his essays. The first chapter of 'The Right Stuff' is worth reading by itself. The rest of the book is fascinating but drags on a bit in the last third. My favorite is 'The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test'. I haven't gotten around to reading 'Bonfire of the Vanities' however so I can't really comment on that.
I bought my X220 from a friend for a hundred bucks thinking it'd be a fun toy to install Linux on, but it has become my daily driver. My only gripe is the flimsyness of the plastic just above the ExpressCard slot.
I feel like there's certainly room to grow as far as input devices for Indian scripts. I learnt to type Devanagari on the InScript keyboard, though I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand it is laid out logically with voiced and unvoiced consonants each in their own rows, vowels are neatly placed on one side, the semivowels have their corner, etc, etc. It just gets annoying when switching back and forth between InScript and Latin QWERTY though (at least क-->k?). I think an input technique based around a mixture of a keypad and gestures would be interesting to try on a touchscreen. hmm...