Gateway Parts

Anyone got advice for assembling a mini computer, battery operated, ethernet, 4 inch screen, windows xp etc?

What I want is a portable computer, not a notebook on which I would like to develop applications. It should be hand carried, have an approximate 4 inch screen, be battery operated (and AC), run at least a 400MHZ CPU, have an ethernet port, at least 3 USB ports (mouse,keyboard,one other), must run windows XP. Also it should cost about half or less than the price of a notebook (Dell for example). If anyone knows of a company which produces such a system or where to start (self learning kits or websites which sell the parts?) I would be ever so grateful.

Public Comments

1. Go into a time machine into the future and bring one back. We do not have the technology for something like that the best we have are palmpilots.
2. There is nothing off the shelf, shy of a laptop, that will do what you want. Even making it yourself will be tricky primarily because of the battery. Rigging up a laptop battery and using the same components into a home made case would be your best bet, but by the time you get done buying all the components you could just buy a cheap < $500 laptop. Now if you just want to make a small form factor PC like I did for my car that is no problem, but it isn't battery powered.
3. You want to assemble a Mini computer? Whao ..... Do you know how big is a Sun / HP / IBM Minicomputer? Logically, I think you should try out assembling a Micro-computer like those Intel Centrino or AMD Althon type first. However, even with a Micro-Computer, it is not that easy to make it into a battery operated edition. You should seriously look into a laptop.