Smaller then a laptop, larger then a Palm, and with a keyboard

[Floid]

As much as I hate to say it, I think tablet-sized devices (Palm, Zaurus or CE) with accessory folding keyboards are the best/only bet right now.

Some of the MobilePros may be able to take NetBSD or Linux, but you'll need a CF to wedge it on, and so forth.

Upshot is that, "in theory," Bluetooth (or WUSB, or Zigbee, or who knows what at this rate) keyboards might be cheap someday, making that combination a bit more 'ain't it cool?' and a bit less 'hunched over a deck of playing cards.'  But you might as well pick up a used Transmeta ultralight while you wait.

[Floid]

The Series 7, along with all other models was dropped by Psion some years ago, the 7 was their last gasp, they still produce a variant of the series 7, with more memory and ram, running WindowsCE.net for £1100 - which is waaaaay out of my budget.

I could swear the NetBook is available with EPOC (or Symbian) again now, but the cost isn't going to be much better, so I didn't bother mentioning it back there.

There was a bit on TheRegister a while ago (after the collapse and WinCE declarations) about them finally shipping EPOC(bian) drivers for at least one flavor of 802.11b card...