In the past perhaps, but blackberry recently caved into demands from India to allow security to tap into RIM messages. So, I don't see them as being secure any more.

I would imagine the point is the OP wants to build something him/herself.

Well for one thing, building things has its own rewards. But also, a lot of times commerical products don't necessarily have the bells and whistles you want. The way I read the OP's post, he was already at the hobbiest electronics stage, and presumably wanted to advance beyond the simple blinky light stage. He/she wanted to know what was available in terms of displays.

I am just starting to get into Arduino programming, and I see various sellers. I tend to be more interested in the 2.4 and 2.2" diagonal LCD, many of which have touch screens than the larger ones. Lets see: Adafruit has a 2.8" LCD + touchscreen for $40 (though it is on backorder); I see various ebay sellers (e4u2011, isecsv110, yyli666 are ones I've marked) have 2.4" displays + touchscreen + SD reader for $20.

The usual place that talks about print permance is Wilhelm Research: http://www.wilhelm-research.com/ In general, the answer for home printing is the HP or Epson pigment printers with the appropriate papers, and UV blocking. However, I would tend to think that the only way forward is to backup the digital media, and backup early, backup often. You want the photos stored on your own backups that you control, stored as standard JPG images at full resolution. You want multiple backups, spread phsyically across different media and stored in different locations. You do want to think about cloud or other remote backups, in case something like Hurricane Katrina comes through and wipes out your whole town and surrounding area. In any backup system, you want to plan for at least every 5 years of recopying files from the old media to new media, as the media evolves.

While I am an IBM employee, I don't speak for them. That being said, for people in the technical tracks, one of the things that management looks at when making the decision to promote somebody, is what kind of patents have they done or been a part of. At the lower levels, it may not matter as much, but as you get higher in the ranks, it becomes much harder to get promoted if you don't have patents.

I've been a dreamhost customer for about 6 years now (shared web server though, not VPS), and I've been very happy with them. One of the reasons I went with them originally was I could update my web site with ssh instead of having to use FTP. I use their host as a CVS server (through SSH), and I remember you could also set it up as a SVN server (maybe GIT by now).

I was laid off by AMD 3 years ago. I hope the people affected will eventually land on their feet and go on with their lives. Even three years ago, AMD was getting into the bunker mentality of just trying to survive. The trouble is they made some missteps starting with Barcelona and Bulldozer, and Intel has woken up and become much more competitive.

IBM sold the laptop business to Lenovo a few years ago. I am currently moving from a Thinkpad T61 to a Thinkpad W520, and currently only the integrated screen drivers work for me out of the box, which means I can't plug in my external monitor.

For use in the field you probably want a small screen. I use a $40 MP4 player (JXD 969) that takes video input to provide remote viewing for my digital camera. Sure the resolution is only QVGA (320x240), that is what my camera's A/V output produces. Sure maybe in a few years, these devices will go away, but it is likely the system mentioned in the OP will also be enhanced, or their will be new systems.

That's why having a standard replaceable battery is important. So many of these devices either have batteries that are soldered in, or are unique to the manufacturer and will be hard to come by when either the manufacturer goes out of business or makes the next generation of new shiny that uses a different battery type. The JXD 696 that I mentioned earlier for instance takes a Nokia 5C battery that is very common (my previous cell phone in fact used it). Unfortunately, it looks like the newer generation of JXD portable music/video players now have a soldered in battery.

On the other hand, 5v (usb) charging is pretty common, and you can get cell phone recharger batteries fairly cheaply, and just carry a few for use during the day, and recharge at night (assuming you have power at night). The Energizer Energi to Go is one such unit. There are 9v and 12v power packs as well if your unit needs more juice.