For no particular reason I recently purchased a Nokia N800 Internet Tablet. Much like the Chumby and the Eee PC, it's an embedded general purpose computer. It runs Linux and has browser, email and chat applications, plus dozens of third party goodies. Since a newer N810 came out, the N800 has dropped considerably in price -- so much so that it came within my "meh" range -- the amount of money I'm willing to spend on something that may or may not work out.
So what is the N800 for? Here's the pattern I noticed: I carried my MacBook back and forth to work and on trips and many other places because it has all of my personal digital life on it -- notes, emails, bookmarks, IM accounts, passwords, and so on. I have become very used to just having that information always at hand. At work, this personal MacBook sat next to my work computer -- and was very useful in keeping my personal and work lives separate. I'm using the past tense, because I'm using the N800 to conduct an experiment: what if that were my portable, personal computer? I have another desktop Mac at home, so all of my heavy computing needs like photo management and music-ripping have a place to live. Can I be reasonably happy with a very small but more importantly much less capable portable personal computer?
I'm currently about one-week into this experiment, and the results are not yet in. Some things obviously work well: instant messaging is very good. Reading e-books is very good. Mail seems just OK. Browsing the occasionally web page works fine, but more intense browsing is only so-so (actually just today a good ad filter because available for the N800's web browser -- pages load much faster now!).
I will post an entry with the results of my experiment after the new year, though my wife already has the MacBook, so one way or another I'm not going back :-).
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