My company creates and sells learning modules, used in conference
rooms where people come for learning sessions.
The end of session for such lessons is our multimedia modules, that
serve as quizzes/tests sanctionning the day's lessons.
Learners visualize those modules on a videoprojector screen, and are
able to vote and provide their answers through a voting device
currently connected by radio (not Wifi) to a central system in the
room. Their "voting" boxes more or less like what would be an
old-fashion version of those :
http://www.elearning.ac.uk/innoprac/starting%20point/images/cspintro2.jpg
(The previous version even had a cable not so long ago !)
We'll soon need more equipment, and the current "voting kits" we rely
on, containing that voting device, come a as very expensive and heavy
package that we have to buy from another company.
We are therefore trying to think of how we could rely on a lighter,
in-house solution on the form of ideally of simple "terminal" (box,
device, PDA, ?...) that would connect to the room's Wifi network and
let users vote to the questions asked by our server (PHP MySQL
planned), rather than rely on the cumbersome and expensive proprietary
solution we currently use.
On a technical point of view, having our "server" in the room (could
be the teacher's laptop only) serve basic webpages on one side, and
"students" in the room browsing the quizz with a laptop or PDA and
clicking on their choices on the other, would work, but the issue is
to have a very simple tool and not one computer per person, to reduce
costs and potential issues (the lighter and simpler the solution, the
better).
Weight and size are also important: as we sometimes have to deliver
sessions within our clients' companies and carry all our stuff there,
we cannot do with dozens of laptops that we'd have to haul around (and
power and update and...nightmare). We need something small, light,
that can have hours of power autonomy unplugged, and preferably that
could connect by Wifi. In a way I was thinking that a stripped-down
version of that Skype phone I recently saw announced
(http://tools.netgear.com/skype/), possibly without a screen and used
as an ultra-portable client (mini dumb terminal ?) would be the
solution, but do such things exist ? It seems GSM phones that use Wifi
are only coming out ? Also GSM phones could have be used in a way, but
communicating by SMS seems both impractical and expensive in the long
run ?
If it comes to that we could consider having a custom device
developped for us, but who should we turn to to work on such a
prototype ?
If you can think of other resources I could turn to to find more about
that they'll be appreciated.

Best regards.