For various reasons, I'm thinking that it may be time to get some kind of
portable computer.  A laptop or notebook would do.  A palmtop/``hpc'', or
wearable would also do.  (^&  (Side note, the ``handheld'' link from the
main page goes to hpcmips, to the exclusion of hpcarm/hpcsh.  Is this an
oversight, or a deliberate choice?)

Some of the referenced systems are hard to find information on.  (I
vaguely remember browsing around a week or so back, and getting frustrated
trying to see what the cost of some hpc.* machines would be.)  So, at the
risk of being gauche, I thought that I'd ask if any NetBSD users had
experiences with machines that they could recommend.

It would primarily be used as a nice (read: NetBSD) interface to a foreign
network, as well as sometimes acting as a datashuttle.

 * I need to carry it around, but battery life isn't important (I can plug
   it in all of the time that I'm using it, I think).
 * NetBSD must run on it, and X would be nice.
 * Ethernet is required (not sure if I need 10 or 100 mbps, yet, or if it
   matters to the ``foreign'' net; I could tolerate 10mbps, I think, if
   I can connect upstream with it.)
 * Building kernels on it may be nice, though if it's an i386 I can do
   that on one of my other machines.  Other than that possibility,
   horsepower isn't all that important.
 * A GUI web browser would also be nice.
 * Some long-lived rewritable storage (e.g., disk) would be good; though
   for large amounts of data, I can resort to burning CD's on an
   available NT box.
 * Total cost should be under $1,000.  Would rather be under $500.

I remember that a thread about IBM Thinkpads went through recently, but I
thought that I'd broaden my horizons beyond i386's.


  ``I probably don't know what I'm talking about.'' --rauch@math.rice.edu