A lot of astronomers use IDL but NASA projects in general must put their software in the public domain, so it is not surprising to find packages like the Astronomical Image Processing System (AIPS), the C Flexible Image Transport System (FITS) I/O (CFITSIO) libraries and many other packages and interfaces in SciPy.

For pocket-sized Internet radio, Skype, e-mail not associated with a cellphone. There was a story on one of the eee blogs about Toshiba creating a pocket-sized umpc-type of machine but it was a prototype. So it would not be surprising to see some of the umpc machines morph in this direction. There are Zaurus descendants sold in Japan but they are very expensive to buy in the US and not really made for us.