Dell Studio 14 Artist Edition Laptop (Core i3)

Like the Dell Studio 15 Artist Edition, the new Dell Studio 14 (Artist Edition) is a 14-inch laptop that combines excellent performance with very good looks. It's based on Intel's PineTrail processor, the Core i3-350M, and comes with a dedicated ATI Radeon HD 5450 graphics card.

Dell Studio 15 Artist Edition, the new Dell Studio 14 (Artist Edition) is a 14-inch laptop that combines excellent performance with very good looks. It's based on Intel's PineTrail processor, the Core i3-350M, and comes with a dedicated ATI Radeon HD 5450 graphics card. Design & Usability

The new Dell Studio 14's screen lid has a glossy surface with customizable colors which you can configure on Dell's website. Our review unit came with purple colored horizontal lines streaking across its screen lid -- clearly not the best look the Studio 14 has to offer. The laptop preserves characteristic Studio design elements like its dropped hinges, sturdy build quality, slot-loading optical drive and the laptop's overall tapering design. The Dell Studio 14 continues to cloak itself in a simple-yet-functional design, which is admirable. In fact, a lot of its design and build characteristics have trickled down to the entry-level Inspiron series of laptops, as we saw on the Dell Inspiron 15-1564 and Dell Inspiron 14-1464.

The Studio 14 laptop's very well built (better than the MSI CX420 laptop), and its dropped central hinge is sturdy to say the least. The laptop weighs a moderate 2.45-kg, which isn't too bad for a 14-inch mainstream laptop. It comes with a glossy LED-backlit 14-inch screen (1366x768 pixel resolution) with a 16:9 aspect ratio. The Dell Studio 14's screen isn't as large as the one onLenovo Ideapad Y550, but it is very close to it in terms of image quality. The screen displays crisp, clear text and video, and has very good horizontal viewing angles. The Dell Studio 14's keyboard and touchpad are as good as ever. The keyboard sports large, easy-to-type on keycaps that are closely packed -- they are different than the Ideapad Y550's or MSI CX420's keys, and great for fast typing. The touchpad is very finely textured and a treat to use, and the two mouse buttons are nice to press. If anything, the Studio 14's touchpad lacks multi-gesture support (found on the Ideapad Y550).Hardware Features

The Dell Studio 14 laptop has very good hardware components. The basics include an Intel Core i3-350M 2.26-GHz processor, 4GB of DDR3 RAM, 500GB hard drive and an ATI Radeon HD 5450 graphics card with 1GB VRAM -- this is pretty good for a mainstream 14-inch laptop. Unlike the Inspiron series of laptops, the Studio 14 comes with a slot-loading DVD drive. It comes with three USB ports all of which support charging of gadgets (mobile phone, MP3 player, etc). One of these USB ports doubles up as an eSATA port -- convenient to hook up an external storage device. The Dell Studio 14 comes with Gigabit Ethernet, Wi-Fi 802.11n, and Bluetooth 2.1 wireless connectivity. Apart from three audio jacks, the Dell Studio 14 also has an HDMI port, multicard reader, and ExpressCard slot on its chassis. The laptop comes with a six-cell battery and 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium operating system. The only thing it doesn't have is a FireWire port, compared to the older Studio 15 Artist Edition, but the Studio 14 laptop still has very good features -- it's rivaled only by the Lenovo Ideapad Y550.

Performance

In a nutshell, the Dell Studio 14 Artist Edition offers very good performance. A WorldBench 6 score of 95, PC Mark Vantage score of 5296, and PC Mark 05 score of 5811 are the highest we've seen in a sub-Rs. 50,000 (US$1,079) mainstream laptop. Multitasking with several processor and memory-intensive tasks is smoother on the Dell Studio 14 Artist Edition. Although a 3D Mark 06 score of 3440 on the Dell Studio 14 is the lowest in our Top 5 Mainstream Laptops, the dedicated ATI Radeon HD 5450 graphics card is good for casual gaming at best -- Far Cry 2 at 1024x768 and High setting gave 22.9 fps.

We had no issues, however, with the Dell Studio 14 laptop's audio-visual experience -- second best to the Lenovo Ideapad Y550, in our opinion. Both 720p and 1080p HD video files played just fine and the combination of cinematic visuals (on the screen) and better-than-average sound (from the onboard speakers) was very good for a 14-inch mainstream laptop. The glossy screen was good to look at both indoors and outdoors, and the Dell Studio 14's keyboard and touchpad combo is nice and simple -- slightly better than the MSI CX420. As far as battery life is concerned, we clocked a time of 1 hour 28 minutes on the Studio 14's six-cell battery during our benchmark test. This is just a shade below the Lenovo Ideapad Y550's and MSI CX420's time. Expect to get over 3 hours of browsing the Web over Wi-Fi on a conservative power plan on the Dell Studio 14, which is pretty much standard from a mainstream laptop.

Bottom Line

The Dell Studio 14 Artist Edition sells for Rs. 45,300. For that price, you get a pretty decent 14-inch mainstream laptop with a nice screen, very good keyboard-touchpad combo, and one of the best feature sets of our Top 5 Mainstream Laptops. Compared to the Lenovo Ideapad Y550 and MSI CX420, the Dell Studio 14 offers better processor, RAM, and greater hard drive space -- but has an inferior graphics card, in comparison. We would still recommend the Dell Studio 14 over the MSI CX420 if you're looking for a 14-inch all purpose laptop for home. However, if you want a laptop with larger screen and better graphics performance, go for the Lenovo Ideapad Y550.

Tip: If you don't care much about the fancy screen lid, the standard Dell Studio 14 with a similar configuration sells for a lesser price.

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Apple iPad Faces Challenge from TouchPad Internet Tablet Laptops Read more at Suite101: Apple iPad Faces Challenge from TouchPad Internet Tablet Lapt

Hanwang Technology Co., Limited, China’s leading tablet computer producer, will launch their stylish new internet tablets on next Tuesday (May 18, 2010), local web sites said on Monday (May 10, 2010).

"Touchpad looks very cool. We began to develop our tablet computer far before Apple did. We have confidence to defeat the Mac tablet in domestic market,” said Liu Ying Jian, President of Hanwang Technology on May 10, as quoted by the Beijing-based Sohu.com.

Liu said that the company will begin to sell two of their new tablet laptop models, Hanvon TouchPad B10 and TouchPad F10, in the Chinese market on May 18.

Hanvon TouchPad B10 and F10 Tablet Laptops will be Cheaper than Official Apple iPad

The Hanvon TouchPad B10 is heavier than iPad weighs between 600g to 800g depending on covers (plastic, aluminum or carbon fiber). In terms of specifications, TouchPad has dimensions of 9.6 x 7.2 x 0.55 inches, a 120GB hard drive, 1GB of DDR2 RAM, 1.3MP webcams on front and back. It runs on Windows XP.

Liu Ying Jian said that the Hanvon TouchPad B10 would be sold in the Chinese market at 5,999 RMB yuan ($879), which will be cheaper than the Apple iPad sold through official channel in the market considering the high consumer taxes in China. But it will be more expensive than the smuggled iPad tablets.

Currently the smuggled iPad computers are sold in Mainland Chinese at the prices of from 4,500 yuan ($660) to 10,000 yuan ($1,470). As Apple will launch their oversea sales, the prices of smuggled iPad tablet computers will be going down in the near future.

Hanwang Technology began to develop and produce tablet PC since early 2000s. But their tablet computers never prevailed in the Chinese market due to the high prices – they were usually priced at around 20,000 RMB yuan ($2,940) and few consumers would buy them. Hanwang Technology planned to launch TouchPad this March. But the debut of Apple iPad forced the company to reconsider their price strategy and delayed the launch date of new tablets to this month.

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Lenovo intros budget-priced IdeaPad Z series, new U-series laptops

The Lenovo IdeaPad U160: an 11.6-inch screen, but the components of a fuller-powered laptop.

(Credit: Lenovo)

Beyond the quite well-known ThinkPad line, Lenovo's consumer-oriented IdeaPad series gets slightly less attention. Sometimes it can be hard to pick out differentiating features among IdeaPad lines, but they're generally a pretty attractive, affordable, and well-featured bunch of notebooks.

Furthering the budget side of the IdeaPad brand, Lenovo has announced a new Z series of laptops that angle themselves as affordable entertainment portables, with a starting price of $649.

The IdeaPad Z560 head-on.

(Credit: Lenovo)

The three announced models--the 13.3-inch Z360 and 15.6-inch Z560 and Z565--have 16x9 aspect ratio HD screens, Dolby enhanced audio, pre-set OneKey Theater II AV settings for optimized media modes, and new Intel Core i-series processors (up to a Core i7-620M) paired with Nvidia GeForce graphics (up to a GeForce 315M) in the Z360 and Z560, and storage options up to 8GB of RAM and a 640GB hard drive. It sounds good, although we wonder what one would cost with the configurations we'd prefer.

Taking a page from many laptop manufacturers lately, the IdeaPad Z565 offers up an AMD processor paired with ATI graphics (up to an AMD Phenom II quad-core/ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470), presumably at a lower price. Blu-ray is also available as an option, giving all the ingredients to turn a Z-series IdeaPad into a pretty good media laptop.

New Lenovo U and Z series IdeaPads (photos)

The U-series IdeaPads are known for being a bit more austere but stylish, ultraportable with a bit of a corporate feel. The IdeaPad U350, which we reviewed last year, had a great design and a metal finish.

The U160, U460 and U460s have textured aluminum lids, with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and ambient light sensors for controlling screen brightness. The U160 has an 11.6-inch screen and weighs under 3 pounds, but can be equipped with a next-gen Intel ULV processor up to a Core i7-640UM, and up to 4GB of RAM and a 500GB hard drive. It also comes with built-in 3G, but only integrated Intel graphics.

While the U160 has a clean white look inside, the 14-inch U460 and 460s have a brushed-metal design that matches the look in the Z-series and that we loved in the U350. The U460 uses standard-voltage Intel Core i-series processors, while the U460s, like the U160, has a ULV processor.

All of these new IdeaPads will go on sale starting in the near future (June/July).

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