I'm sure there are ways to do similar things to what I propose. One way is Portable apps. But that means installing software in windows. Something you maybe don't wanna do if you don't need it. Appart of that, I know that having a full distro installed in your flash is a little bit bigger than Portable apps, but it is not that much. Maemo is a really squeezed distro. I bet it can be installed in little more than those 124MB Portableapps are using.
Having said that, the goodness of my proposal is in the details. If you run maemo browser x86 instead of installing mozilla in that computer you have all bookmarks available. You can add a bookmark and then switch off that computer, knowing that bookmark has already been added to your ARM maemo browser, because it is the same software and the same data structure.

If you have a pop3 account and you wanna send a long message (not willing to use the two fingers keyboard) you could switch to your mom computer, write down the message and send it with a proper computer. Or you maybe would write it down and save it in drafts so you double check it in your way home before sending it. No need to use middle text editors or Google Mail.
The day a proper PIM exists in your tablet it can be the same.

You configured your wireless card to connect to a WEP wireless? Perfect, maemo x86 can take data from it and connect to the same wireless without having to remember the password. You have to configure it from scratch in the other computer? Perfect. Maemo will know how to connect as soon as you unplug the device.

Wanna upload a lot of music from another computer? Ok, start it with maemo x86, move that music to your flash folder and run canola x86. In no time you'll have the directory parsed and the music added to your canola ARM db. Probably faster than moving the music and then running the parser from within Maemo.

I'm sure there are other good examples. But the point here is: NITs and Netbooks are gaining more and more power. As much that it starts to make sense you use them as primary portable computer.

It makes sense to use an external keyboard and an external mouse and an external screen and an external hd connected to your portable computer when you are in your office. Lots of people prefeer that configuration than using the already usable ones included in their laptop or syncing the data to their desktop computers.

In the case of NITs you could extend that idea to include a faster CPU and GPU and Memory. And that, I feel, could be very convenient.