Not sure if it's sacrilege, but the Steam Deck has finally fulfilled my UMPC dream. It's amazing to just have a portable Linux workstation where everything works out of the box.
That said, my ancient dream device of yore would have to be those Windows CE powered palmtops of the 90s. I'd love to see that form factor make a comeback.
The CE PDAs are rad! I picked one up at a garage sale in the mid 2000s and could never get it running but I kept it around for a long time just to admire the design and feel of it. The Unihertz stuff is sort of getting there but not quite yet. Also their proprietary obsession is questionable.
I'd love a truly pocketable PDA style x86 machine though!
The Steam Deck seems like an insane value. I've been eyeing it for productivity (mostly programming) and gaming. If you don't mind my asking, how do you find the dpad? I mostly play 2d games and that's the one bit that's put me off the Deck until now, seems like it's secondary to the sticks