My Thinkpad X220 is by far is my favorite of the half a dozen or so Thinkpads that I have owned. Mine also came pre-wired with a WWAN antenna and it was simple matter to transfer my Gobi card to it, add it to my ATT cellular family plan, and never be dependent on having to hunt down a wifi hotspot.

This won't really apply to the OP since they're looking for netbook level performance, but keep in mind that the Core i3/5/7 M & U series really made a notable performance jump from 2nd to 3rd gen, similar to the jump made from 1st to 2nd gen in the Desktop i5/i7 Quad Core chips.

Can't beat that; pretty dang hard to beat that even if you have to replace the battery sooner than you'd like.

The E6220 and E6230 are really nice machines; a bit chunkier than the X220/X230 and not as nice a keyboard as the X220, but they have the distinct advantage for people who want to keep them a long time of being very, very easy machines to repair/replace parts in -- much, much easier disassembly than the Lenovo X series.

The other down side is no 9-cell battery -- options for the internal battery is 6-cell -- although if you don't mind the extra weight the 9-cell "slice" is still available and while it makes for a comically thick and heavy machine, at the time they were new the E6230 I had with 15 cells total was the closest to a truly all-day machine I'd ever seen.

Dell also has the annoying habit of sourcing screens from different sources for the same machine; the difference in contrast level and brightness between the better SKUs and worse is pretty dramatic.

I wouldn't personally touch anything with a U-series chip older than the 4th generation, although the 3rd-generation ones are almost tolerable. Starting with the 4th generation, of course, the "U" series are the mainstream.

The jump in performance from the i5-5xxM to the i5-25xxM to the i5-33xxM was pretty dramatic with each generation, as you said, but I think most people will still be pretty pleased with the 25xxM chips: they are nearly as fast as the 6th-generation 6xxxU chips being sold as mainstream today.

The biggest theoretical disadvantage to the 2nd-generation chips is that they don't have a very good integrated GPU compared to the 3rd-generation and newer, but Windows 10 is less demanding of GPUs than Vista and 7 were, and unless you're doing heavy photo editing or video editing, the difference between 2nd/3rd/4th generation Intel HD graphics is unlikely to matter, and none of the three are good enough for even fairly casual gaming or professional 3D graphics anymore.

Given your requirements I'd say either get a tablet or an ultrabook like the Asus UX305 http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/...ctID.320751400

What are you planning to use it for that has you dismissing a tablet out of hand?

If all I needed to do was use the internet and apps, I could get by with a tablet. But I need a hard drive to load at least a dozen programs and a USB port to use a mouse.

I love the size and weight of my old netbook. If I go much bigger and/or heavier, I might as well keep traveling with my work laptop.

OK. The ultrabook I mentioned only weighs 2.6 pounds. Some are even a little lighter and manage to pack a 13.3" screen in a pretty small package. I travel with my HP ultrabook and it works well for me.

If the notebook/laptop/tablet/whatever has bluetooth, then you can use a bluetooth mouse and save a USB port.@:-)

Agreed, I'm still (gasp) using my E6230, it has 16GB of RAM, 1TB SSD, I upgraded the WIFI to an Intel 7260 so I get 802.11AC and BT 4.0. Does everything I ask of it and it is rock solid. I have a 7250 on order but honestly, the only thing I am really looking forward to is the 1080p screen.

Except, of course, the X220 is of the Last Laptops With A Usable Keyboard tribe (X220/T420/T520) while the Dell is not. I didn't want to suggest the X220 because I was risking sounding like a broken record, but really, the choice of laptop is very easy when there are only three worth buying and you just need to pick the screen size

Do these Dells have a HDMI output ?

and is it easy to add a WiFi-cellular card

it would be nice to plug in a large monitor at home and have GSM cellular when on the road

I second this and the X220/240 suggested.

I looked at all of them recently, but decided to get the Dell Chromebook 13 as I wanted a nice chromebook after i sold my mac (shocking I know!).

Thinkpads have great build quality too.,

Yes, the 6230 has HDMI and VGA out. Also space for a PCIe cellular modem.

They introduced a 1920x1080 screen option as part of the E6230 mid-cycle refresh.

De gustibus, and all that -- the keyboard used on the E6x20-E6x40 and E7x40 series is considerably better than anything since, or than the Lenovo W/T/X_30 and W/T/X_40 series machines, plus it lacks the weirdness that Lenovo adopted years ago of swapping the control and Fn key locations.

Even the Lenovo W/T/X_20 series isn't as good as the prior Lenovos -- which is why I still have an X201 which I use occasionally for document prep.

As already mentioned, yes (and VGA) and yes. I'm not sure if Dell whitelists on the WWAN card on that model or not -- the models that would have originally come with the E6230 are rather dated now.

It's one of the easiest machines out there to put one in, as well; single-screw access to the bottom panel, and virtually anything you'd want to upgrade is under there (vs. many Lenovos which have one DIMM there and one under the keyboard.)

Of the Dells, I'll say I've had pretty good luck with a D630, E6220, and E7240 (current), all in pretty middling configurations (my current E7240 is an i3/4gb/128gb/1366x768) with very few complaints when judged against their peers.

I will say the E7240 was pricey given the specs (I want to say ~$1k from CDW right around initial release, purchased ~2 yrs ago) but it wasn't my money or my choice, so I'm just judging it on size/weight/durability/real-world performance. Right now it's not quite old enough to be cheap and not quite new enough to be a performance contender so I can't say I'd really recommend anyone seek it out, but it's a solid little machine for sure. My only real complaint is the docking station socket location makes it take up about 4" more desk space than is really necessary, but that's about it. At the time it felt pretty sleek but now it's almost pedestrian... there's notably thinner and marginally lighter available in 13.3" screens for around $600 most days of the week (mainly talking about the Asus UX305 series) and I've seen Amazon Warehouse Deals have them as low as $363. If I were shopping today, that's probably where my money would go.

The suggestions you got were pretty good. Without knowing how you'll be using it can be a bit tough to give better ones though.

Just as a heads up though, if you buy a new machine with W10 installed, that does not have downgrade rights available, you will access to a W7 licence. Many of the machines that have been suggested have W8 or W10 on them, and a roll back may not be quite possible. You may want to narrow your search (or possibly expand it) to include machines with downgrade rights.