After a gap of several years, I now own a PDA again. My last Psions, both 3mx and 5mx, passed into the great eBay clearance sale some time ago, because although I love the SIBO and EPOC operating systems, the lack of connectivity was becoming a real show-stopper. And I was never fond of the EPOC mail client anyway.

For the occasional trip away I've been using an ancient Palm IIIxe with IR connection to a phone. AAA batteries that last forever, a fantastic mail client, a browser that achieves amazing things given the size and power of the device, and the whole thing cost me £8.

But recently I've been doing a lot of travelling and, while the Palm solution is great for keeping up with mails, it's less than perfect for maintaining this site and managing the business while away. I don't really want to lug a laptop around with me unless I have to, so I've been looking in the middle ground.

The various netbook style machines have some appeal, but really I want something that'll fit in my pocket. After considerable research and much playing around with smartphones and suchlike, I've bought a Nokia N810 Internet tablet.

Nokia doesn't make much of a marketing fuss about its Internet tablets. In fact it's not easy to buy them new, even though the latest model, the N810, was launched just a year ago. We reviewed its predecessor, the N800, here and came away feeling somewhat confused. As, judging by the sales figures, did many people.

However, I've had the N810 for almost a week and so far I'm impressed. There are a few differences between this model and its predecessor - layout, lack of FM radio, different camera arrangement - but by far the biggest for my purposes is the slide-out keyboard.

It's not a great keyboard, and given the space Nokia could have done much better. I'd have preferred something like the old Psion 3-series keys, with which it was possible to type at a fair old rate. But even so, the hardware keyboard is usable and, for me, better than the on-screen 'soft' keyboards that both N8x0 models have.

The N810 runs a form of Maemo Linux, which is fantastic. The OS is fast, dependable and has plenty of open-source applications available. It lacks a decent word-processor, which is a shame, but some bright spark has tweaked a Debian package so that you can run OpenOffice.org, the GIMP and pretty much any other desktop application you can think of.

It has no phone - which is fine by me - but it can pair with any Bluetooth phone if required. The wi-fi support is excellent so I can tap away almost anywhere, and the Claws mail client is better than pretty much anything available on any platform. And its screen is exquisite.

It's still not my ideal PDA, but it's getting closer.