OT: suggestions for rugged portable computer

[Douglas Allan Tutty <dtutty@porchlight.ca>]

I'm going to be travelling in semi-wilderness and would like to take a
computer with me.  Primarily for note-taking with vim, and when a
phone-line is available for email or google-searches with lynx.  I don't
need X or GUI but if it was available then perhaps some light graphics
stuff like grabbing images from a digital camera or reading pdf files.
In any event, my processing requirements are basic (I can do all this on
my 486, except for the camera due to lack of USB).

While a laptop would work, I've found that they generally aren't very
rugged and if something breaks then the whole thing is toast.  I'm
thinking instead of putting together a tiny system that has built-in
graphics, a serial port for the modem (which could be on a USB dongle),
and USB, adding a small LCD screen and keyboard and putting it all in a
small pelican case.  I guess it would be more along the lines of an old
portable computer (remember those?) rather than a laptop.  I want it to
run regular Debian like my other systems rather than something like DSL
or other tiny distro.

Has anyone here done anything like this?  Any suggestions on a small
cheap case/MB?

Thanks,

Doug.