Just in time for CES, Lenovo is readying a new smartbook called the Skylight, a refination on the netbook concept.  It weighs less than two pounds and features its own specialized interface to make getting online faster and easier than ever before.

This little dynamo offers up ten solid hours of battery life, along with a host of sweet tech specs including a 1 GHz ARM CPU, a graphics processor, integrated GPS, Bluetooth connectivity and, not surprisingly, wi-fi and mobile broadband.

Skylights will be available starting at $499, which already makes me look at it askance.  I can buy a pretty sweet laptop for that kind of money–do they really think extended battery life is going to make that big a difference?  And as for the “custom interface”, my current laptop connects to the internet pretty smoothly, and it’s just a old Dell Latitude.  Sure, we’re all sort of looking to the streaming media concept to be the new form of movie delivery, too, but I don’t see any provision to play your old DVDs on the Skylight.

Excuse me if I find myself unconvinced that this smartbook is going to be the next big thing when it lacks the versatility of other options.  All it looks like from here is a neutered laptop.

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