gadget recommendations?

I'm considering buying the iPod Video 30GB... But I might as well buy a mini-laptop, since I'll probably want to replace my computers soon (laptop is 3.5yrs old, Desktop probably older) and don't want to deal with the trouble of transporting a Desktop computer around.

Any suggestions for mini-laptops, or similar gadgets? I'd like a portable which:

* I can run Linux (as long as I can get someone to help make Linux more usable for multimedia-type things)
* costs less then USD 500
* powerwise, lasts as much as a PDA (i.e. possibly weeks), perhaps by using flash memory. (the reason PCs constantly need power is because of RAM, right? Doesn't flash memory overcome that?)
* can connect to the Internet in WiFi hotspots

One advantage of such a system is that I can download German-English dictionaries for free, e.g. by using my own automatic dictionary builder as well as other useful data for getting around the city (maps, emails I've received recently)

how can I restart wireless networking in Linux?

how can I restart wireless networking in Linux?

Restarting the computer works.
"/etc/init.d/network restart" doesn't.

poor communication - unpleasant experiences

There are many many people here who are multilingual, and yet can't speak English at all.

German & Italian and German & Polish seem to be the most common such combinations. Today, one such woman got frustrated trying to communicate with me, and got unpleasant... And I think I even understood what she was saying in the end, including her last sentence, "Nah... You don't understand!" with a dismissive "go away!" gesture.

My problem: I was too polite, and let her say what she had to say in her too-fast-German and way-too-fast-Italian. If I had insisted in dominating the conversation, despite my poor, broken German, then I would have been able to make her say things in a way that I understood them. I would construct sentences slowly, and give her the chance to fill in the missing words.

It's hard enough for me to communicate with such people in languages that I *can* speak, especially if I let them run wild (although I think it's often the case that they often don't understand themselves either). If the goal of the conversation is me coming to understand something, then I should constrain people's expression as much as possible. I have nothing against self-expression, poetry, etc... but only in situations where the goal of language use is to be non-informative.

In related news, I'm thinking about starting to learn Esperanto. It would be yet another "international club" to be a member of, and one whose goal is precisely to overcome language barriers.