The Hut sells the Packard Bell Dot netbook for just under £160 including delivery. This model is essentially a smaller laptop with almost every feature cut down or reduced (including the price tag though).

You get a 10.1in 1,024 x 600 pixels display, Windows 7 Starter, an Intel Atom N2600 CPU, a dual-core model clocked at 1.6GHz with 1MB L2 cache and an Intel NM10 Express chipset (with GMA3600), 1GB of RAM, a 320GB hard disk drive, Wi-Fi, Ethernet, HDMI and VGA ports, three USB ports, a card reader and one year warranty.

The netbook weighs in at only 1.05Kg but yet measures a rather thick 24mm, more than most Ultrabooks and comes with a 3-cell battery. Netbooks came into life after Asus and Intel launched the Asus Eee Pad netbook back in 2007, a form factor that quickly rose to prominence because they offered decent computing at a very low price and in a tiny volume.

Before Netbooks, small computing carried a significant premium. It’s worth noting that this form factor was released as a direct competitor to the “One Laptop Per Child” project initiated by Dr. Nicolas Negroponte.