Clueless consumer

Can anyone help me out? My laptop is this behemoth that a) has a battery that no longer holds a charge and b) is far from portable. I've been thinking about upgrading for a while, but then I wondered if I should move onto a new laptop entirely or keep this ol' guy (I complain about it but it's not that bad) but get a more portable device like a tablet.

What I want is something more portable and capable of word processing, something I could easily tote around, take to a cafe or under the sun (so a battery life), and pull out to write on if I want. (Aside: I used to carry around an actual paper notebook, but I find writing on paper so stifling. I constantly want to edit and you can't do that as easily with pen and paper.) I don't do much more than that besides surfing around on the Internet, really. Would a tablet be a smart move? And which one? (iPad vs. Android discussion starting in 3, 2, 1 . . .) I'm a bit leery because I'm not sure how fun typing on an on-screen keyboard would be for possibly pages of text.

While a netbook sounds more amenable in that respect, I think they're pretty much being phased out, aren't they?

Anyone have suggestions?