Dell Launches Planet’s “Thinnest” 15-inch PC, But Which Planet Is It On?

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Dell-XPS-Thinnest-Planet

Dell just launched its newest 15-inch notebook named the XPS 15z, which it claims in its advertising material is “the thinnest 15-inch PC on the planet.” However, the fact that it’s still fatter than a 2.5-year-old MacBook Pro is a testament to Apple’s superior design and engineering… as well as Dell’s willingness to use flexible semantics when it comes to trumping Cupertino.

With many similarities to the MacBook Pro, you’d be forgiven for thinking Dell’s design team had a picture of Apple’s popular notebook on the wall for motivation. The XPS 15z features a similar 5-dot battery indicator, a backlit keyboard, speaker grilles on either side of its keyboard, chicklet keys, and a silver shell with a black bezel around its display. Though there are some obvious differences, such as the black palmrest, the Windows operating system, and the additional 0.02 inches in thickness.

That’s right – I said additional 0.02 inches: Dell’s “thinnest” PC on the planet is still thicker than Apple’s unibody MacBook Pros. Which begs the question: how is Dell’s notebook the thinnest on the planet? Well, in its advertising material Dell seems to choose its words carefully.

Rather than labelling the 15z the thinnest ‘notebook’, Dell has instead opted for the word ‘PC’. While Macs are also personal computers, the word ‘PC’ seems to be increasingly used to describe a Windows-powered machine these days, and I can only assume that’s what Dell means when it uses the word in its adverts for the 15z. Otherwise, the planet on which the 15z is the thinnest PC certainly isn’t our home planet.

We could forgive Dell for this mistake, however, if that additional 0.02 inches is there to accommodate a list of super awesome components that would never fit inside a slender MacBook Pro. But it isn’t.

There are two choices when it comes to processing power: the dual-core i5 and i7 processors. Unfortunately there’s no quad-core option, which is what you get from the MacBook Pro. However, the 15z does feature a 1080p display, which will be plenty of compensation for some, in addition to a 750GB, 7,200RPM hard drive and 2GB GeForce GT 525M graphics.

Though Dell’s new machine isn’t currently available in the U.S., Electronista have confirmed that pricing in the U.S. will start at $999, which is $550 less that the low-end MacBook Pro, and makes up for the slower processors.

In Australia, where the notebook has already launched, prices start at $1,399 AUD ($1,470 US) for  a 2.3GHz Core i5 processor and 6GB of RAM. For a 2.7GHz Core i7 processor model with 8GB of RAM, that price rises to $1,699 AUD ($1,786 US).

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