Goldilocks would just love the NEC MobilePro 780 handheld computer. Smaller than a laptop, bigger than a PalmPilot, it has a 90 percent scale keyboard you can actually type on and an 8 inch (diagonal measure) half-size screen that comes with a scrolling wheel. Better still, it has a touch screen rather than a touchpad, which, along with the usable keyboard, is an unusual combination in this class of computer devices.
Just over an inch thick and weighing less than 2 pounds, the 780 really can be thrown into your carry-on bag. Because it comes with wireless networking cards from Proxim and Aironet, it can hook into a convention center's LAN without too much fuss. It has pretty good standard connectivity capabilities, too, including an integrated 56Kbps 2 V.90 modem for e-mail and Internet.
It can run (but not alter) PowerPoint presentations, which can be connected to a large monitor or projector via an SVGA port (sorry, no USB port on the 780, at least not at this writing).The 780 comes with a 168 megahertz NEC processor, the fastest for this size machine, and 32 megs of RAM.
On the down side, the Windows CE operating system limits the functionality of programs like PowerPoint. But it really is about as portable as you can get without going to a palmtop, and the price is definitely right. Visit www.nec.com.