Thanks endso for the very useful writeup on the Uax series. I have been seriously considering it for the past two weeks, the only two things that put me off were the rather chunky size and the not-so-good battery life on the now rather archaic units. I was not even aware of the other issues you mention in your post, that was the last drop to sway me away from those.

Another thing I am currently considering is also Sony, the VAIO P series. Any info on those?

FWIW, I would not consider a combined mic-speakers port a problem per se. An adapter is a trivial thing to make, in the worst case. As far as I am concerned, the main problem with the combined ports is that the mic part of those is mono only. Not for me as I am not a big audio processor but in general. If it does not bother you, even better.