I use a Newton, on a daily basis. It does handwriting like no other machine, has an excellent primitive outliner mode, and exports OPML to the desktop for easy processing later on. I use it for my dates/tasks management, brainstorming, note-taking in meetings, and so on. It's a collection place, and a place to do some processing of that collected material.

I bring up my hacked method of organizing my life (or links to things I wrote elsewhere) simply to share how an organic filing system arises over a decade's use. Moving away from it now would really hurt.

The links to what I wrote for another group, without any further explanation, are at:

It's relatively brief in both cases, but it's how I manage my life as an academic. I'm sure you can do a Palm in the same fashion (using NoteTaker rather than the anemic memo), and my Alphasmart Dana would do much of it really well, too. Anyway, the point is to look at the system and not the hardware that I use. Enjoy!