It seems that the little "lunch box" form factor with a flat screen monitor is really portable but has the advantage of giving you control over the kinds of hardware you're using, as opposed to a laptop where you're at the manufacturer's mercy. I would think that your safest bet would be to convert a mac power book into a PPC linux machine, but building a little linux lunchbox machine would still be a lot cheaper than forking out $2000 for a powerbook, but that's still better than spending $850 on a paper weight.
