That said, lugging my clunky Dell with the dead battery to the recent Code4Lib regional event in Vancouver was enough to convince even me that perhaps something a little more modern might be the way to go. With the rise of i- and android devices, mobile technologies have gotten a whole lot better and cheaper in the past 5 years, to the point where you don't have to spend much money to get something that's quite a bit more functional than a 5 year old laptop, even one that's been beefed up with extra RAM.
In this case, because both portability and cost were an issue, I had my eye on a Samsung series 3 Chromebook. I'd been curious about these things since they came out last year; the form factor isn't that different from a Macbook Air (in terms of overall weight and dimensions) and the cost is well under $300. The 16G hard drive and 2G RAM might seem puny, but for my purposes (email, web, and lightweight projects on the road) they were fine. (Regardless of which portable device I'm using, I store very little on the local drive: it's safer that way, in terms of both information security and data loss.)
But while the hardware was enticing, the software environment wasn't. Google's all-browser-all-the-time ChromeOS wouldn't be too practical from my perspective. I need something that can connect to VPN, run a proper text editor, do RDP, connect to a Windows share, and host a local webserver for dev and coding projects. In other words, I needed to be able to run a proper OS on the thing. Like linux.
Luckily, I am not alone, and people far more technical than I am have already done the heavy lifting required to install a variant of Ubuntu linux (called ChrUbuntu) on the Samsung. The procedures are well documented so I won't repeat them here. The only gotcha is that it's not possible to install desktops other than the standard 'ubuntu-desktop lts' on the Samsung using the script, even though the documentation says it is. I tried to install xubuntu initially but was only able to boot to the console; the desktop didn't install. Re-running the command as "curl -L -O http://goo.gl/s9ryd; sudo bash s9ryd ubuntu-desktop lts" fixed the problem.
There are some things you need to do after you get the OS installed, like fixing the trackpad, the terminal, sound and getting flash to work (if you care about such things). A good overview of post-installation tasks is available here.
Having used it for a few days now, what are my initial impressions? Overall, highly favourable. The boot time is fast (10 seconds to login screen), applications start quickly and general responsiveness is good. I haven't tested battery life yet but it appears to be at least 4 hours, likely more. Pretty much everything works as expected, apart from one thing: when it goes to sleep, it doesn't wake up again. That was somewhat disappointing, although given the battery life and the quick boot time it is possible to work around that limitation simply by deactivating the sleep function and shutting off the computer when I'm done.
Oh, and I can't seem to get Minecraft to work. But apart from those two things, smooth sailing so far.
Finally, I should probably mention that this kind of cobbled-together low end configuration is not and will never be supported by any professionally managed IT unit, including the one in the Library. If you had to factor tech support costs into this finicky, warranty-voiding setup the economics would go sideways pretty quickly. I did this on my own time and nickel, a kind of busman's hobby project, if you will.