The Dell Studio 14z is the perfect laptop for students who want something solid below $1000. The 14z is meant to be an all round performance laptop and in this regard it lives up to the expectations.  The 14z is also probably the thinnest and lightest 14-inch notebook that Dell has ever made. It is also meant to have a long battery life but you will need to cut back n performance to achieve that. It does lack an optical drive but these days that is not a deterrent at all.

Read on if you are in the market for a sub $1000 laptop with a $649 entry point that is a solid all round performer and perfect for students.

The Dell Studio 14z looks similar to the Studio 15z but is much lighter and thinner than it. That is thanks mainly to the fact that the 14z does not have an optical drive. Now a lot of people will see the lack of an optical as a negative but the fact of the matter is that most people these days hardly ever use optical media. They either use the Internet or a flash drive or even an external storage for transporting and storing their data.  Thus, in the modern age a laptop lacking an optical drive is not a big deal. Users like students who are always on the move hardly ever use it when they have WiFi, Mobile broadband and USB sticks at their disposal. If you really need an optical drive, you can always get a matching external one from Dell.

The 14z’s chassis is a great blend of plastic and magnesium alloy to provide a good balance between lightweight, durability and rigidity. The strong chassis will help it survive through long-term abuse at the hands of the students. However, the interiors are not magnesium alloy.

In the closed position the notebook looks and feels quite thin. Since it has a large 8-cell battery at the rear and an overall light chassis, the rear end feels heavier than it should. This makes the laptop feel a bit unbalanced.

The lid has a nice thick matte finish with a rubberized surface that is meant to stay on through a lot of travel that the laptop will see in its time. The reviewers note that the lid is not strong enough to withstand pressure being applied to it and does flex a bit. However, the thickness apparently keeps it from reaching the screen, which remains distortion free.

As is usual with school laptops, the 14z is available in multiple colors. Dell specializes in this because almost all the recent Dells laptops that I have reviewed come in a positive rainbow range of colors. Dell also intends to start offering about 120 designs this September onwards so that people can have more variety in their laptops. Also to be noted that $5 from the purchase of every pink colored 14z (Promise Pink) will given to the Susan G. Komen for Cure organization.

At the bottom of the notebook there is the battery and the access panels for upgrading your Studio 14z. When I say panels however, I mean that you have the battery panel and a panel to access the RAM. There is absolutely no easy access to the hard drive or other components, which can cause some amount of vexation amongst the customers. This was probably done to safeguard the components but it also means that you will have to open up the entire bottom casing to upgrade the hard drive.

Cheaper notebooks in comparison like yesterday’s Lenovo G550 have more access panels than this but may not be as securely built.

The 14z has a decent 14-inch screen and is definitely one of the better screens in the market. It has great color that pops out, text is rendered very well, there is a good amount of contrast and it has good viewing angles. That is more or less all you need from a decent laptop screen. It has a high native resolution of 1600×900, giving it a proper 16:9 aspect ratio and a good amount of screen real estate. Reviewers report that the side-ways viewing angles are quite good and hence it would be great for watching movies with friends. The vertical viewing angles aren’t all that above average but most people will not be bothered by it.

Most users will notice the tiny speakers on the two upper corners above the keyboard and will not think much of them. Well, the14z actually has four speakers and those two are the ones that point upwards and handle the higher frequencies. The ones that handle the lower frequencies are pointed downwards and are larger. The sound will not rival larger standalone speakers but will give you a better sound quality than what you would expect from a laptop.

The keyboard on the 14z has comfortably spaced keys that are large and textured. They have good travel and muted clicks and should make for comfortable typing. There is an optional LED backlighting upgrade for the keyboard, which should help students with all-nighters and late night chatting. The keyboard however is not the strongest and reviewers have noted some bounce even under minimal typing pressure. Other than it is a nice keyboard. The touchpad is a decent one with good tracking and sensitivity.

The 14z has 3 USB 2.0 ports with one being a combo eSATA/USB port, 1 FireWire, 1 ExpressCard/34, HDMI and DisplayPort but no VGA port.  There is also no SD card reader, which is more of a let down than the lack of a VGA port. An optional upgrade puts the card reader in the ExpressCard slot. It also has a Kensington lock to keep the laptop safe.

The 14z runs on an Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 processor (2.4GHz, 1066Mhz FSB, 3MB L2 cache). It has 3GB shared DDR3 1066Mhz RAM and 320GB SATA HDD at 5400rpm. An Nvidia GeForce 9400M G handles the graphics. It has a good overall performance and performs better than the new 13-inch Apple MacBook, which has a similar configuration but a higher price. The 8-cell battery is supposed to give 6 hours of runtime at the cost of a few performance cuts when you switch to power saving mode.

This configuration will cost you $979 and the 14z starts from $649 with quite a bit of the goodness intact at the entry point. It is a great laptop for anyone who wants solid build, durability and performance for a good price.

The Dell Studio S1440-022B is targeted at school students who are looking for a budget laptop. This new offering from Dell does something quite bold and does away with the optical drive altogether. As a result, the laptop becomes much slimmer and weighs less as well.

14-inch laptops are not known for being very lightweight and while the Dell Studio S1440 does not break any records, it is plenty portable at only 4.7 pounds. To further put things into perspective – 14-inch laptops hardly come under 5 pounds. The S1440 has a very slim and compact design and manages to run for quite sometime. It also has something of an extra in its ports where it features a DisplayPort. It also bundles not trial but full version licensed softwares within the price.

But what is it really like working without an optical drive? Is this laptop a worthy buy? Read on to find out.

At $750, the Dell Studio S1440 is priced just right for its category. It offers everything a student could be asking for and more. However, you have to look past the core configuration and look at the entire bundle.

The S1440 offers buyers full versions of Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007. There’s also a 15 months license of Norton’s Internet Security 2009, which makes for robust security albeit hogging some resource.

Weighing in at less than 5 pounds and with a long battery life, this laptop scores high on portability. Portability is a primary concern for students and this is where Dell has made really smart choices. Useful softwares out of the box and a cheap price are the other concerns of the majority of students. Dell has answered these as well with the pricing and the bundled software.

As for the missing optical drive – how many people still use the DVD-RW drives on their laptops? Most of the data on laptops comes from the Internet, WiFi, Ethernet or from pen-drives.

When it comes to the design, Dell breaks a few norms of the industry. While most of the laptops these days are coming out with glossy finishes, the S1440 actually goes ahead with a satin finish on the exterior. This relieves the user off worrying about fingerprints and smudges. The interior has a plastic finish that looks really nice. There is a bit of gloss above the keyboard where the screen joins the body and on the thin bezel that surrounds the screen.

The keyboard on the Dell Studio S1440 is a large and comfortable one. It has very little space left on each side and hence it fully utilizes the laptop’s width. The reviewers have reported that the keys feel as good as they look and perhaps even better. They are apparently very quite and have just the right amount of travel. Quite keys are a blessing inside a classroom because you do not want to be clickety-clacking away in the middle of a silent class, especially if you are doing something you are not supposed to do.

The touchpad buttons have been reported as a bit too cushy but easy to use nonetheless. Even though the S1440 has a 16:9 aspect ratio, there are no dedicated multimedia keys. The function keys take care of that. Just like Macs, the functions keys perform the actions assigned to them when pressed. When pressed in combination with the ‘fn’ key, they work like the normal functions keys (F1, F2, etc). For Windows laptops though, this is actually a reversal of what it is usual but there are other laptops in the market that use this convention. The wrist area is a bit narrow than usual but still provides for a good amount of support. Dell offers backlit keyboards on similar models through its website but you won’t get that option if you buy retail units.

The screen is 14.1 inches diagonal and has a 16:9 aspect ratio that is perfect for movies. The native 1366×768 aspect ratio makes it perfect for watching movies in HD (720p though). However, the widescreen will make viewing long documents slightly awkward.

Another thing noted by the reviewers is the fact that the speakers sound really good for their size. Even on full volume they have been reported as being surprisingly clear and enough for watching a movie without headphones.

Dell tries to cover the missing optical drive by offering buyers a plethora of ports. While having an HDMI output is quite common these days, the same cannot be said for the DisplayPort output that the Dell Studio S1440 has.

The S1440 has a quirk whereby it has two headphone ports instead of one. This is probably done keeping in mind the fact that sometimes we want to share the music or the movie playing on our laptop. There is the usual microphone input.

The laptop also has a four-pin standard firewire port, which is another port that is becoming less and less common these days. Still, the S1440 has it and it is a good thing for those with older firewire devices like external audio interfaces and storage devices.

There are three USB 2.0 ports, with the third one being a combo port containing eSATA as well as USB. There’s also a webcam included. There is an ExpressCard/34 port as well, which will make some people happy because some of the mobile broadband services still use these cards. It has Ethernet and WiFi (802.11b/g/n) but no Bluetooth, which is bad. However, if you can sacrifice one USB port from time to time, you can use a cheap Bluetooth dongle that you can find almost anywhere these days.

The S1440 runs on a mid range Intel Core 2 Duo at 2.1 GHz (a T6500 processor). It comes with 3GB of DDR3 SDRAM memory (1066Mhz) and 320GB of storage (5400rpm SATA). Graphics is handled by the small but powerful 256MB Nvidia GeForce 9400M with which you can play moderate 3D games at decent settings.

Battery runs well over 5 hours on average usage and on low-power settings it can easily go over 5.5 hours to almost 6.

Competing laptops on the market definitely provide more performance for this price. However, they do not offer the full version softwares or the design. So if you are looking for something that is portable and usable out of the box for $750, this is great laptop to go for.