On the used market there are some small notebooks available for $400-600. Fast processors and large storage are not needed. Text files are extremely efficient. Pictures and sound are the only reasons you need heavy metal,

The small screens are still much larger than the PDA's. 20 pt type on a PDA would mean one sentence per page.

Two of the best are Sony's. The 1999 models were lovely & small. One has a built in camera. Mine is a PCG-N505VE.
8 X 10 X .78 inches and only 2.7 Lbs.

At the start I used Serial cables to transfer the files. Now I use USB cable.
Very fast.