In Tokyo, Singapore and Seoul, and even lately in major centres in China, where 3G networks came on line this year, it’s possible to work effectively through mobile web connections. Dealing immediately with the morning’s emails from Europe while you are on the hoof in the middle of the Asian afternoon is satisfying and efficient business practice.

All very well, but laptops are still heavy to lug around, especially in a tropical summer. Traditional styles are also becoming difficult to work on in the confines of an increasing number of airline seats. It’s long been the case that nothing but the smallest netbook – and often not even that – can be used on the average coach class table; but even in some premium economy seats today, a decent-sized laptop is too big if the person in front of you reclines his seat.

So the computer industry has been working feverishly on bringing new mobile web solutions to market – all trying to make it easier to keep working on the move. Indeed, the coming year may be the time that the laptop ceases to become the main portable device we use, and migrates full time to the office desk.

Now, of course, we are well used to using smartphones as a miniature laptop, but we all equally acknowledge that while a smartphone with basic PC business functions – email, document reading, web browsing – is indispensable, it’s also very much a compromise. There may be people who create usable business documents on a smartphone, but for many of us, the most we will do is make a few alterations to documents or tap out a brief email.

Enter, the new lightweight weapons in the business traveller’s armoury.

Apple may have created its “magical and revolutionary” 680g iPad as little more than an entertainment device, but from the moment Norwegian prime minister Jens Stoltenberg was pictured, shortly after its launch, apparently running his government with his iPad at JFK Airport while waiting for an ash-delayed flight, the idea of the iPad as a laptop substitute was born. As one blogger wrote weeks after the launch: “Will never need to open my MacBook Pro in a hotel room or on the road again. Try it before you criticise it. It’s easy to use and makes reading/surfing a pleasure.” Another blogged: “Moves the laptop to desktop position … this is the computer you’ll take on business trips.”

The point is that the iPad’s screen is a comfortable size, the device has a 10-hour plus battery life, and you can type on it, either on the virtual onscreen keyboard or one of the optional add-ons. However, the iPad is still big, if not heavy; too big, and fragile, to use on the street. Also, even though top models have a SIM card for emailing and web browsing, it is, a little frustratingly, not a phone. Sure, nobody is going to put an iPad up to their ear, but to be able to make calls with a headset or speaker would have been nice. Which is why boring-but-important Dell rather brilliantly brought its Streak to market weeks after the iPad.

With its 12.7cm screen, the Streak is a quarter the size of an iPad but almost twice as big as an iPhone, so watching films or reading documents or e-books is comfortable. Yet the Streak fits a suit or jeans pocket without a struggle – and, more importantly, works as a phone. Dell’s iPad party pooper has a removable battery, too, so you can carry a charged spare and not get caught short as iPhone and iPad users are resigned to being…. And it has a camera…. And the screen is pretty much unbreakable.

But, if you think that with the 24.6cm iPad and the 12.7cm Dell Streak, manufacturers have run out of laptop alternatives, think again. Toshiba, one of the oldest and best laptop makers, has opted for solutions that are novel without being wacky. One, the AC100, looks like an ultra-slim (14mm) ultra-light (870g) netbook with a 24.6cm screen, a full-sized keyboard, but runs on the Google Android operating system rather than Windows, so is, in effect, a giant mobile phone. Android means it can be fired up to action from cold in less than a second. For storage of documents, you can plug in an SD card, or use Cloud storage, accessing wirelessly as required. Meanwhile, Toshiba’s Libretto W100 is a 17.8cm Windows 7 machine but with no keyboard and two touchscreens – a form which makes reading e-books and magazines especially pleasant. For writing, one screen can be a virtual keyboard, or you can use one screen for web browsing and the other for document reading.