Like Lenovo’s recently announced (but not available until July) u350, the 14z sacrifices something in the way of size and weight as compared to something like the Adamo, but still measures in at a respectable 2-3cm. And performance-wise, it barely sacrifices anything: a wide range Core 2 Duo processors are available (though notably, no ULV versions), as is a full complement of RAM (up to 5GB DDR3), HDD (up to 500GB) and display (either 1366×768 or 1600×900) options.

The $US649 configuration will be a bit bare, obviously, but it’ll outpace Lenovo’s offering out of the gate, mainly due to its vastly less-shitty graphics hardware. And it’s not just other manufacturers’ products that the 14z’s Nvidia 9400m will put to shame—Dell’s own Adamo, basically a much, much more expensive version of the same concept, except with inexplicably lame video hardware, will be handily outperformed by any version of this laptop, which can be had for less than a third its cost. Weird. As you can see in our above hands-on gallery, though, it’s not quite as pretty, although as with all the Studio products, you’ll have plenty of colour choices.

The 14z’s most interesting feature is its availability date: Intel tipped off May and June as months that we’d hear about major manufacturers moving into this new niche, which proved true, but Dell is the first one of them to bring a product to market. It’s available now, from Dell’s website. Full specs and press release below. [Dell]

UPDATE: The product page is now live.

NEW DELL STUDIO 14z LAPTOP PERFECT POWERHOUSE FOR ONLINE GENERATION

· Thin, cool design for those who download media from online

· Powerful, mobile entertainment system combines HD resolution screen with great audio and 500GB1 hard drive option

ROUND ROCK, Texas, May 28, 2009 – For the generation that has grown up with the Internet and can find just about anything online, the new Dell Studio 14z laptop makes it easy to carry their digital world with them. Designed for students and others on the go who demand the perfect balance of mobility and performance, the Studio 14z is a homework-busting system by day and an entertainment powerhouse by night.

It features a svelte design and a huge 500GB1 hard drive option that can store up to 125,000 songs, 142,000 photos or 133 DVD quality movies2. The Studio 14z allows people to watch their favourite movies and TV shows, listen to streaming music with friends, store a vast MP3 collection and socially network from just about anywhere3.

The Studio 14z is the industry’s first consumer laptop available with FailSafe™ theft prevention. This option helps protect personal data should the laptop go missing or be stolen. With Failsafe engaged, owners can track network information and the ISP location of the laptop when it connects to the Internet, and get help to remotely erase selected files and render the laptop unusable until the rightful owner unlocks it.

“Young people have grown up with the Internet and can find almost everything they need online.” said Michael Tatelman, vice president of Dell’s global consumer sales and marketing. “They want a slim, easy-to-carry laptop and like the choice of a larger hard drive over an optical drive. The Studio 14z has the storage and speed that most people need, and it comes with colour options that let them truly express who they are.”

The Studio 14z comes in six colors: Black Chain Link, Midnight Blue, Spring Green, Plum Purple, Ruby Red and Promise Pink (U.S. only). Dell will donate $5 to Susan G. Komen for the Cure® from the purchase of each Promise Pink laptop.

The new laptop also comes with Dell Remote Access4; the optional premium version allows people to access content via their home network of personal computing devices including desktops, laptops, ultra-mobile devices, smart phones and web cameras.

Priced from $649 U.S., the Studio 14z is available now online and over the phone in the U.S. and Canada.

The News:

· New Dell Studio 14z laptop sports a stylish, thin (0.79-1.2-inches) design for students and digital downloaders who want a combination of power and exceptional mobility

· Energy-efficient, mercury-free, 14-inch 16:9 LED display with HD resolution (720p/ 900p)

· Intel® Pentium® Dual Core, and Intel Core™ 2 Duo standard voltage processors up to T9550 (2.66GHz, 1066Mhz FSB, 6MB Cache)

· Integrated NVIDIA® GeForce® 9400M graphics5

· Digital Video/Audio via HDMI and DisplayPort

· Standard 1.3MP webcam with dual digital array mics

· Starting weight of 4.3 pounds6

· Standard FastAccess™ Facial Recognition Software to help prevent unauthorized access to your computer

· Optional Phoenix Failsafe™ Theft Protection to help protect laptop and data in event of theft

· Advanced touchpad control to help improve productivity

· 4W, SRS®, 2.0 Audio w/ discrete tweeters and dual headphone jacks

· Up to 500GB1 HDD capacity

· Optional 8:1 Media Card Reader via 34mm Express Card slot

· Six-cell battery standard, optional slim design 8-cell battery for up to 6:46 hours of battery life with WLED display option7

· Standard Wi-Fi, optional Bluetooth® and mobile broadband to connect anywhere3

· eSATA connectivity for high speed data transfer rate (up to 6X USB 2.0)

· PowerShare – Charge your USB-connected cell phone and other mobile devices via the USB 2.0/eSATA combo port even when you’re unplugged from a power outlet

· Optional external optical drive options (DVD+/-RW, Blu-ray Disc™ read-only and read-write drives)

Intel told us to expect cheap, thin, midsized laptops to start showing up in major laptop manufacturers’ catalogs this summer, and sure enough, Lenovo announced theirs one week later. Next up, according to Digitimes: Hewlett-Packard.

As per usual, the paper cites trusted sources in the “Taiwan manufacturing industry” who say that HP is gearing up to first incorporate Intel CULV processors into existing laptops, after which they’ll design their very own cut-rate ultrathin laptop, basically inline with the Aspire Timeline or Lenovo U350, and hopefully nothing like the HP Chameleon concept, shown at left. They won’t ship until Q4 of this year though, by which time the field will be a little more crowded. [Digitimes]

Intel and Lenovo’s concept makes enough sense: take those ultrathing, ultra-expensive notebooks like the MacBook Air, Dell Adamo or VooDoo Envy and sacrifice a little performance, a little weight and a little thinness to bring the price down. After all, they’re already sluggish, so why not? What makes it genius, though, is how this compromise manifests itself. It turns out, these mild design and performances compromises knock a tremendous sum off the price.

The U350 is a sub-1-inch-thick, 1.6kg 13.3-inch notebook which, aside from its thin profile and conspicuous lack of an optical drive, is a fairly standard piece of notebook hardware. You can get just about anything you want in one of these guys—Core 2 Solo, Pentium ULV or Celeron processors; up to 8GB of RAM and up to 500GB of storage—but after a while you’ll start to lose the price advantage that makes it attractive in the first place. It’ll be around that $US700-$US800 pricepoint that the U350 shines. Available from July, full press release and spec sheet below. [Lenovo]

IdeaPad U350 Laptop
Display: 16:9 aspect ratio, 13.3 inch LED, HD 1366 X 768
Processor: Intel ultra low voltage CPUs and small form factor chipsets: Intel® Core 2 Solo SU3500 (1.4G, 800 MHz, 3 MB), Intel® Pentium® SU2700 (1.3G, 800 MHz, 2 MB), and Intel® Celeron 723 (1.2G, 800 MHz, 1MB) processors. Mobile Intel® GS40 and GS45 Express Chipset.
Graphics: Mobile Intel® GMA 4500M and Mobile Intel® GMA 4500MHDMemory
Memory: Up to 8 GB DDR3 800/1066 MHz DRAM
Hard Drive: Up to 500 GB 5400 rpm
Battery Life: 10 hours with 8 cell, 5 hours with 4 cell
Weight: 1.6kg
Dimensions:328mmX228mmX17-24.9mm
Connectivity: Ethernet 10/100/1000m/Intel WiFi Link 5150 1 X 2 AGN, Intel WiFi Link 5100 1 X 2 AGN, non-Intel wireless b/g/Bluetooth
Other: 1.3 megapixel camera, ambient light sensor technology, multi-touch touchpad, Dolby Sound Room/two 1.5 watt speakers, Active Protection System, Ambient Light Sensor, VGA ports, 4-in-1 multicard reader, Dolby Headphone, VeriFace 3.5, Quick Start
Software: VeriFace 3.5, Vista Home Basic/Home Premium, OneKey Rescue System

IdeaPad U350 Laptop
Lenovo is pushing the envelope on design to bring consumers ultra-thin, ultra-light and ultra-loaded PC technology. Encased in a sophisticated sleek silver shell, the IdeaPad U350 laptop starts at 3.5 pounds and measures less than one inch thick1. While thin and light to the touch on the outside, Lenovo loaded the PC inside with the latest entertainment and computing features to enhance and simply users’ digital worlds. A 16:9 aspect ratio high definition 13.3 inch LED panel and an HDMI connector allow users to fully enjoy watching movies or other multimedia in high definition.

The IdeaPad U350 laptop also packs in several unexpected features, such as Ambient Light Sensor technology, borrowed from the IdeaCentre desktop line. This technology automatically adjusts the screen’s brightness when in different lighting environments for the best picture quality. Also, Dolby Sound Room complements the video experience by providing a high quality surround-sound audio experience. And with VeriFace facial recognition technology, they can make their face their password for easy log in. A camera also comes in handy for video messaging or making Skype calls using the laptop’s WiFi connectivity2.

The laptop’s entertainment features are powered by a backbone of computing technologies, including choices of Intel Core2Solo and Pentium ultra low voltage processors, up to 8 GB high speed DDR3 memory and up to 500 GB of hard drive storage. The technologies help users to do more, faster, such as burning DVDs, compressing and opening documents and enjoying smoother, more realistic gaming. For high reliability important to individual business users whether on the clock or off, Lenovo borrowed a component of ThinkPad laptop design with the Active Protection System. This helps protect data by temporarily stopping the hard drive if the laptop should fall. The IdeaPad U350 laptop also comes with OneKey™ Rescue System to help recover data if it becomes corrupted in just a few simple steps.

According to the the company (via the NYT), the new laptops will be most closely comparable to the Dell Adamo, MacBook Air and Voodoo Envy. They’ll be a bit thicker, but still under an inch; they’ll have slower processors, but not Atoms; they’ll be light, but not feather-light. This concerted effort of “buts” means that these almost ultrathin (semiultrathin? kindathin?) laptops will ship in at less than half the price of their expensive cousins, some even dipping below the $US600 threshold.

This wouldn’t be a revolutionary category, but it would be an attractive one: ultrathin laptops, as recently exemplified by the Adamo, are already rife with compromise, as they’re slow, they don’t have optical drives, contain wimpy video hardware and they’re not very expandable. They just represent the wrong kind: a compromise with a singular, obsessed focus on weight and size, with no regard for price. A re-balancing of the formula, like the one Intel is predicting, would be more than welcome. [NYT]

Unfortunately LG’s ultra-thin new sets—which boast 8ms response time, LG’s TruMotion 120hz video smoothing technology and a space-saving LGS (light guide sheet) backlighting technology—appear to be, at least for now, trade show gimmicks. That means no price, no model name, no date of availability. And without seeing, in person, whether this LGS backlighting provides a comparable image to a regular CCFL backlight, it difficult to guess if we’ll even see any of the new technology in production sets. But that’s fine—for now, we gawk. [Tech-on]

JVC is claiming the world’s lightest 32-inch LCD TV here, and by the looks of this somewhat sparse press release, they’re achieving that with a modular design (meaning, as many components as possible offloaded to a companion box), and a “new optical system” covering the backlight. They’re also pushing the green message with “50% less materials and 10% fewer LCD module parts.” We’ll have more from Vegas in just a matter of days. Yikes, is it really that soon? [JVC Japan (translated)]

JVC Develops Next-Generation Super-Thin LCD Technology
Super Thin and Light at .28 inch (7mm) and 11lbs (5kg)
Energy Efficient LCD Makes Possible Flexible Visual Environments

Tokyo, Japan, January 5, 2009 – Victor Company of Japan, Limited (JVC) is pleased to
announce that it has developed next-generation super-thin LCD technology for 32-inch television
displays. The significant reduction in thickness and weight allow greater flexibility in the design
and layout of commercial and household visual environments.

1. Integrating a new optical system and modular LCD construction, JVC technology has made
possible the company’s thinnest and lightest LCD television display at just .28 inch (7mm) in
depth and 11lbs (5kg) in weight.

2. The technology uses approximately 50% less material resources and approximately 10% fewer
LCD module parts than current comparable JVC displays, while maintaining optical, intensity and
low-heat radiation performance. Notably, use of LED as the light source eliminates the need for
mercury.

3. JVC developed new optical elements to realise this new LCD technology, overcoming
technological restraints on thin displays to deliver an energy-efficient, high-resolution display
exhibiting high contrast and luminance uniformity and a wide colour palette.

JVC will be exhibiting a 32-inch LCD TV prototype equipped with the technology at a private
venue in Las Vegas, Nevada from Wednesday, January 7 through Saturday, January 10. The
International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the world’s biggest home electronics exhibition,
is also held at this time.

We’ve previously covered the Samsung HDTV sets that are scheduled to make an appearance in 2009, but this super svelte one wasn’t on the list, meaning it’s most likely prototype fodder for the “thinnest HDTV” category that will surely get an exercise at CES 2009 this week.

The current record holder for thinnest HDTV is Philips with its 8mm prototype LCD, which was shown in Berlin last year at the IFA electronics show. Sony, on the other hand, takes the prize for having the thinnest retail television, a 9.9mm set that’s already on store shelves. For more on the thinnest of the thin and their insane asking prices, check out Wilson’s review of the top three on the market today.

Note: Pic is NOT of the rumoured Samsung HDTV. [PC World]

So if you want THE thinnest LCD at this point in time, this 24.8mm (0.97 inch) display is it. Until, of course, the next thinnest LCD TV comes out some time in 2009, and then you’ll be stuck with the second thinnest, then third thinnest, until one day you’re left with little miss fatty and you’re asking yourself why you spent so much money on such a heifer. Who wants that? Nobody, that’s who. [AVING via GizmoWatch via Fast Company]

The NYT visually quotes Tatelman, Dell’s VP of consumer sales of marketing, with a reaction of his “mouth [gaping] open and his eyes [darting] away.” Tatelman followed with:

I think we need to get some iconic products out there, so people associate Dell’s brand with other things.” Namely, that’s goodbye to clunky, and hello to sleek.

And an analyst says that Dell could “shave $US400 off the MacBook Air price pretty easily.” And a Hackintosh Adamo? We’re excited. Sign us up for duty, Admiral. [NYTimes]