Let me first say that I too am new to pen enabled slate computing, and boy are some people touchy about calling a pen enabled slate computer a tablet PC, I guess we newbies have to be careful about that.

I recently bought one of those 3400’s, and nearly immediately replaced the OS with win2000. For the many modern features, specifically, I really hate a 2 gig FAT primary partition with the rest of your drive mounted as D:\ formatted NTFS. Although, just prior to the reinstall, I easily got a proxim classic gold 802.11b card working under NT4.0. It was necessary to move the drivers via a CF card in a PCMCIA adapter, which was luckily lying around.

One of the drawbacks to this setup is that NT needs to reboot for just about all network changes, and since the SSID is setup in the network system control panel, yup, reboot. This would become somewhat of a hassle if you are roaming from hotspot to hotspot.

But, you want USB also, so NT really isn’t an option…

I am on just about the same plan you are, Under $500, and I believe I am close or on track.

If you are looking at the same vendor I purchased from, he has like a million of these and is selling them three different ways:
His really good packages have a device with a good screen, the carry case, the dock, the keyboard and mouse, power adapter, the external parallel port CD, and the floppy drive. He is listing this for about 249 with a buy it now for 299.

He also has a package with a device a good screen, power supply, and pen. He starts these at 139

He is also selling sets of two 3400s, one pen, one power supply, both supposedly have many bad spots on the screen, he considers these “As parts”

I got one of his high end ones, for about 300 including shipping, I bought the high end package because I knew I would need the dock for traditional PS2 keyboard connectivity for reinstalling new OSs. Having spent a day doing so, I have wondered if I didn’t waste $160, and concluded that I hadn’t. I don’t think I could have gotten the install done without it.

Here is the bomb… Although I got the device for 300, have a 20Gig drive on order for less than 30 shipped, I fully expect to spend about $200 for a refurbished battery if I am lucky enough to find one, and it really needs one. I get only about 20 minutes use with it unplugged.

With the use of my handy CF adapter and keyboard and mouse I had little trouble getting all the drivers setup, and I am still working out the bugs of the handwriting recognition.

Since I have the dock/keyboard/mouse, I will probably buy one or two more of his mid-package models and referb them for applications where I have power, Vehicle GPS platform, and or bedside terminal. But, the real mobile slate computing experience will depend on the battery issue.

I think it is doable at or about your 500 limit.

BTW, I think my method of install would work for XP, but the Fujitsu never put out drivers for this model for XP, the 2k ones might work, I am sticking with 2K.