The ITTs, as everyone knows, are amazing little devices at a great price point. And of course everyone's looking for more hardware features, ports, speed, etc out of the next generation of devices. After squirrling it around in my head for a while though about all the various things people have been talking about trying to hack into the tablet's current hardware platform though I'm toying with a slightly different approach. If you take the hardware requests and break them down into two categories, you end up with something like this: harware desires revolving around mobility/"in the hand":
- Some kind of 3G modem device (heavily debated of course)
- Accellerometers and other cool alternative input sources
- More storage capacities.

Hardware desires that focus more around small and portable but not necessarily "in the hand":
- Video/VGA output
- Hardwire/cabled Ethernet
- Universal IR remote capabilities (a bit inbetween, but for argument's sake let's assume that you need to be in proximity of some kind of TV/device to have a reason for this, so)
- More storage capacity (re-occuring theme anyone?)

So here's my thought: what about a second "portable device" designed to be a kind of "companion" for the tablets? The general hardware might be something like : onboard LAN port, along with wireless access point. VGA output, along with audio ports and USB. Option of either external USB drive or SDHC card reader (so you could take your memory card form the tablet, toss it into this device and pull your videos/etc from there); same story with a USB drive/etc for higher capacity. Small, and easy to carry.
Physically the device would be slightly longer than a tablet, and about twice as thick. There wouldn't be an onboard battery or anything, but again that's not the purpose of the thing: the applications I've got in mind would be:
1) External media player: Take it with you when you travel/etc, use the VGA port to connect to screens/etc to watch movies on/connect to external speakers for music playback. All playback aspects would be controlled through a remote interface on the tablet, made possible since the device would act as a wireless access point. In this case it's acting as a travel router and media output device. Could also be acting as a NAS for larger storage when sitting in a fixed place.
Note: I know VGA is NOT TV OUT... but of all of the embedded hardware I've looked at for this project, the only ones with TV out on them are physically too large and too expensive to be viable.

2) Portable presenation aid: The device could be connected to a projector and let you either : run a presentation on the device's XWindows while being controlled by the tablet (VNC sort of style), or alternatively (if I can figure out the software to do it) the opposite, run presentation on tablet and have this device act as a mirror of the tablet display. (I'm looking for feedback on which one makes more sense for anyone who does presentations)

Essentially the idea is to have a second device similiar in functionality to a laptop, but without the cost/size/etc of a laptop, and using the tablet instead as the controller/input/interface for it.

Of, and of course the price point would be probably in the range of $200-350 depending on the exact hardware...

Thoughts/ideas/suggestions/does anyone think this actually makes sense?

Thanks,
-Rob