In fact, I thought of a similarish project using a nice already existing mechanics, namely the Asus eeePC!

As it happened I managed to get my hands on several surplus EeePC-901's which are fairly nice as it is with the original (really limited) OS they were released with but are pitifully slow when running any modern distribution. (I think the cpu is some weeny atom thingy and there is next to no RAM installed...)

The original OS has some severe limitations, like only having WEP security available! Yes, it seems WPA2 was only invented later on...
Hence need to run something more modern on them.

Well, why not rip their insides out and install a raspi-3 in the device? with modern innards it would be possible to stuff in loads of nice gadgets with space to spare! The form factor is pretty nice, with a real keyboard that's got the solid mechanical feel.