I'll side with GeneralAntilles here.
I'm starting to accept that my N810 isn't ready to replace my TungstenC
for datebook and contact information. But for book reading, web surfing,
and VNC control of the laptop running my sound system, the N810 is finally
successful at things that were pretty much proof-of-concept on the Palm.
When next I go on tour, I'll be bringing one laptop instead of two or three,
and that one will travel in the fllight case. My shoulder feels better already.

Although the lack of proper PIM functionality on Maemo is a bit ridiculous there is some hope on the horizon - KDE4 is cross platform, which might mean we see tablet optimized versions of the organizer etc. Of course, perhaps someone at Nokia will be embarrassed enough and finally give us a working calendar with sync on Windows and OS X. For now, I carry an old TX and an N800.

It almost works on a SE P910i.

Almost.

My dream is still to have a phone the size of one of those keychain bluetooth modeules, and a tablet like the N800 -- but with decent input and a non-joke user interface -- to do everything but the simplest of calls.

A data plan that wouldn't cost more than my current ADSL Internet connection wouldn't hurt either...

Check out T-Mobile. I have unlimited GPRS data through them at a very reasonable price.

Not to get too tangential, but what do you think of the TX? I came very close to returning my n810 and buying a TX instead (I had the n810 boxed up and ready to go), but the b-only wireless in the TX gave me pause, and I decided to keep the n810 anyway. How often is the TX's b-only wireless an inconvenience to you?

TungstenC is an amazing crap. It's the most unstable stuff I've ever seen. How many times did I have to do a hard reset just because I went on this or that website. They should have put the hard reset button on the front cover, would have been more usable.
I was very very disappointed by it. I don't even know where it is in my house...

The browsers are all unstable. The Palm is not.
It's not a general purpose computer.
Use it as it's intended, and you'll never need the reset button.

i have been thinking about a similar setup since the day i first read about a design concept by frog design, ordered by motorola.

the phone was a item in your pocket or on your wrist. talk and disply thru sunglasses, input via pen on paper and so on. everything connected via bluetooth.

if one could crunch the phone into a device the size of a avarage bluetooth gps module, things would really be interesting

Have been following this discussion with interest. Sounds like a number of former Palm users find GPE lacking in comparison. May I ask why? Syncing is clearly an issue (although robust two-way syncing with Google calendar would seem to go a long way towards addressing that issue if it could be ironed out). Tight integration with other apps (e.g. email) is also clearly lacking at this point. But what else do Palm users miss with respect to the PIM functions? I owned a PalmPilot long ago & don't recall it doing spectacular things--but I never relied on it heavily. Nowadays I have an employer-supplied blackberry and the integration with my (work) desktop Lotus Notes calendar is quite useful--I can appreciate the value of this.

Re: phone integration, while this is of litttle use to those outside the U.S., I've been very happy with the connection between my Samsung M510 (Sprint) and the Nokia. The BT tethering works great, EVDO is nice, the phone is pretty slim and can stay in my pocket. Standing alone, the M510 is not necessarily anything to write home about, but it has plenty of features and it integrates quite well with the Nokia (and it's cheap (="free" with contract)).

Using the Palm feels like stepping back in time 5 years in comparison to the N800 experience. The connectivity on the N800 is much better and with the extra screen size the connectivity is much more useful. I only use the Palm for scheduling (DateBk), contacts and to dos. The TX is large for what it does - I prefer the no-longer made T3. Unfortunately none of the available calendars (Dates, GPE, KOrganizer) currently comes close to the usability of DateBk and the "it just works" Palm synchronization.