I have a Palm Pilot, I use it for my business. It and the cell phone fills the need for a mobile office very well. It also comes with the Palm Desktop computer program. It allows me to back up everything from the Palm to the computer and also from the computer to the Palm. I have been using it for several years and have been very happy.

Customers are amazed with my ability to remember their home address, what work I did for them the last time I was there and what the cost, & areas I worked in. The truth is that while talking to them on the phone I do a search (the Palm Pilot has a built in search engine in it) and all the info pops up with the dates of the work. I can and do, do this anyplace, not just while in front of my computer. A laptop would also be useful but a lot more involved to use. It takes less then a second to fire up the palm, press a button and it’s on and ready to use. A laptop takes 2 or 3 min (on a good day) to fire up and be ready to use. There are also lots of aftermarket programs you can download for the palm.

I suggest for the simplest system:

Getting Things Done, by David Allen.

Googling around for the title alone will get you tons of info on it, in fact, he spoke for the company Google and his presentation is on youtube as well.

The book is an easy read and it basically uses lists of next action steps for each project.

I have a blackberry and use it for email etc, but nothing beats a thin memo pad, without dated pages etc, where you just use lists of next action steps for each project.