Where have the light netbooks gone?

Recently I had a look for a light netbook, and got a nasty surprise: there are almost no netbooks under 1 kg anymore. If you want to travel light your options are severely limited. You can either purchase the uber-expensive Sony VAIO Lifestyle 8-Inch Netbook that weights less than 700 grams, or the more reasonably priced but still expensive ASUS Eee PC Touch T91 at 960 grams. After that all the recent netbooks now weight more than 1 kg.

Where have all the light nebooks gone?

The original EEEPC 701 was well under the 1 kg mark, what happened? Where have all the light nebooks gone? A better question would probably be "where have the actual netbooks gone?" In my opinion the hallmarks of a netbook are ultramobility, the presence of a real keyboard and a 5 to 9 inch screen able to display most web pages without side scrolling.

Nowadays however most of the machines that are sold as "netbooks" have large 10 to 11 inch screens and a weight above the 1.1 kg mark, these are not ultramobile anymore. These are machines that a lot of people would use as their primary computing device rather than something light that can easily be transported everywhere for a quick surf session. There is light at the end of the tunnel however:

The new Ultraportable netbooks: the smartbooks

Several manufacturers have presented prototypes of new ARM based machines that are much closer to the original light netbook concept of 2 years ago. We have the Mobinnova Elan that offers a battery life of 10 hours in a very light package: only 900 grams. If you plan a trip to Japan this autumn you may also be interested in the new sharp netwalker and its 5 inch 1024 x 600 touchscreen display.

For me the conclusion is clear: there are no reasonably priced light netbooks based on the x86 architecture anymore. If you want real ultramobility you will have to get an ARM based machine or invest a large amount of money in a Sony Vaio.