- "Mini-laptop"
Try and find a second hand Fujitsu Lifebook P1120, they are not so common in this country as they were never officially sold here, but they do appear on Ebay from time to time. http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=18792&item=...
It's a tiny sub notebook running a Crusoe 800 Mhz processor. Comes with wireless,30GB HDD, 256MB ram and a nifty 8.9" touchscreen (the touch bit of which is only just possible to get working in Linux, not that's much of a problem as it has a nipple too)
Everything bar the touchscreen pretty much works out of the box with SuSE 9.2 (although I haven't even bothered configuring the modem yet)
I have seen them going for stupidly cheap money on Ebay before (considering that they were VERY expensive new)
Personally I wouldn't be without mine, at home it sits on the Wireless Lan and acts as a X terminal to the machine upstairs, out and about it has (just) enough horsepower to do most things you would want. The keyboard is a nice balance between small and useable. The screen is top notch, It's a tiny widescreen running at 1020x600 (from memory it's in my glovebox at the moment)
Battery life is pretty good, I get an average of about 3 hours out of the standard one, that's including a couple of boots and using the wireless. There is a double capacity battery that should give you 6 hours plus.
Other plus points are that it is really well built and as I say pretty much everything works in Linux (even the notorious ACPI suspend and CPU throttling)
The only minus points I can think of are that the memory is non upgradeable and fixed at 256MB (although I am working on a mod for this) and as I say they are pretty hard to come by (spares are even harder, mine could really use a new keyboard after a nasty liquid spill....that's how I came by mine it was on a clients scrap pile)
Sorry to evangelise about this so much, but it is my most treasured bit of IT kit.
- Headless and handless (and legless -- just a tube up the bum)
As others have suggested Mac Mini or MiniITX based machines are probably the best way to go. If you are considering the MiniITX route then I recommend www.linitx.com for being very helpfull on several occasions and local (to me at least). Personally I would lean towards the MiniITX route simply because it is a bit more flexible (for a start the hard drive in the Mac Mini is slloooowww compared to the nice big and quiet 3.5" drive you could build into a MiniITX machine)
They are not the fastest machines in the world, (although I hear that the recently introduced 1.3Mhz model is pretty good) but they have every interface you are ever likely to need, can be made very small and quiet...and are just fun little things to play with.
Don't get me wrong...I love the Mac Mini, in fact I am going to buy one as soon as I can afford it. But for a server type application I think the MiniITX route may perform better.