Lack of cheap ethernet? Check out the XSurf2. It's reasonably priced and it's more than just a NIC.
Battery issues is something you can check out before buying the machine. If you take care of the batteries, you'll never run into trouble. You can also replace the battery with a coin-type one.
Bad SIMM slots are an issue but if you're going to use an accelerator it will not matter as it will most likely have its own RAM slots.
Get an A4000 unless you wanna freak out with towerising projects.
