I recently settled on a Thinkpad X230 -- add a couple hundred to that price to upgrade the screen to IPS, and an i5 cpu (and backlit keyboard) -- it's worth it. I also added an internal SSD (you can install it under the keyboard, in addition to having your regular hard drive), this acts as my primary drive with the 500GB mechanical drive as a data store. My only complaint is the screen resolution, but better than the older netbook screens (768 vertical vs. 600 vertical resolution). But at least it is still easier to carry around than the larger 15-inch+ notebooks.