Dell Studio 14z All-Purpose Laptop
I had a hard time trying to figure out which machines I should compare the Dell Studio 14z (also known as the S1440-022b) with. It's a slim, slick laptop with no optical drive, like the MSI X340 and Acer Timeline. It has a reasonable amount of horsepower and an nVidia GeForce 9400M GPU, akin to what you'd find in a MacBook Air. So I kicked the tires on this $750 Best Buy special (as of 8/11/09; at Dell's Web site, the customizable 14z starts at $650) to see how it stacked up.
The first thing you'll notice is the lack of an optical drive. One could make the argument that many netbooks and ultraportable laptops take the same tack these days; but those models are compact, while the 14z has a great 14-inch screen. With a machine this size, most people expect to see a place to slide in a disc. And don't feed me the line that external optical drives are pretty cheap now. (Yeah, usually they are, but Dell's aren't: The 8X eSATA DVD-RW drive sells for $120, and an external BD-ROM goes for more than twice that. In contrast, HP sells an external BD-ROM/DVD-RW drive for its Pavilion dv2 for $129.)
The first thing you'll notice is the lack of an optical drive. One could make the argument that many netbooks and ultraportable laptops take the same tack these days; but those models are compact, while the 14z has a great 14-inch screen. With a machine this size, most people expect to see a place to slide in a disc. And don't feed me the line that external optical drives are pretty cheap now. (Yeah, usually they are, but Dell's aren't: The 8X eSATA DVD-RW drive sells for $120, and an external BD-ROM goes for more than twice that. In contrast, HP sells an external BD-ROM/DVD-RW drive for its Pavilion dv2 for $129.)
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