In favour of our little green friends: eMates are not at all slow at doing what they are designed to do (it helps here to have the memory upgrade, mind you, which widens the data path to 32-bit, gives you more storage, and makes the thing a good deal more responsive). They are excellent note-taking devices: you have a keyboard, 24-36 hour battery life with half-decent cells, the capacity to add a sketch in the middle of a note-taking session (e.g., copying from a blackboard) — and upload it all seamlessly to a desktop, sketches and all.

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As an owner of an eMate 300, I concur with Beachycove's rebuttal - these eMates are relatively capable for primitive note-taking during lectures, and for drawing basic geometric figures if required. I doubt anyone would want to write a formal essay on a 300 (I've written the opening draft to a couple just for fun, but the keyboard is really too small to type on for extended periods of time), but do consider the eMate as a potential candidate, nevertheless. They're fairly inexpensive (I got mine for $30 last year with its original power adapter- it's in mint condition, and the original battery still holds an exceptional charge - about 20 hours, or so), and lots of fun to use. They also draw in a bit of attention as many people have never seen a Newton product before, so just be cautious if you plan on using it in highly dense public areas.

In regards to data transfer, I use my 5215CD as the recipient when sending notes over from the 300, which is fairly quick. Also, the Newton OS is compatible with a variety of word processing programs, such as Word, ClarisWorks, and WordPerfect, which is very beneficial for Newton users, and increases the functionality of the Newton PDA as a whole.