Every once in a while, I have a wistful desire to take a notebook with a modern high-capacity battery, pull out everything except those batteries, and slap in an e-ink display, a single flash card for storage, and something less powerful than a Raspberry Pi for processing. And then write just enough operating system for it to boot to Emacs.
That, in my mind, would be a programmer's computer. (Or a writer's computer.)
I actually had one of these, http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_sacat=0&_from=R40&_nkw=alpha... but the first edition that ran off of AA which looks a little rare (good thing because the keyboard started to stick, oh and dump the contents as everything is stored in RAM).
That, in my mind, would be a programmer's computer. (Or a writer's computer.)