Dell Studio 14z

From its art-splashed Studio notebooks to the runway-worthy Adamo, Dell has been trying harder than ever to make it products stand apart from the competition on the fashion front these days. And with graduation season in full swing, the company has unveiled the new Studio 14z, a slim little notebook targeted at cash-strapped grads who need a little money left for books and beer, but still want a machine worthy of some peer envy when they show up to class with it.

Think of it as a more practical alternative to the MacBook Air: In exchange for a little extra meat on the ribs, you pick up a much faster 2.0GHz Pentium Dual-Core processor, a larger 14-inch LED-backlit display that will handle 720p high-def video, and twice as much storage, courtesy of a 250GB hard drive. As for graphics, both machines pack the Nvidia GeForce 9400M, which isn’t exactly a gamer’s dream, but will competently handle all the HD video you can throw at it.

Just how much thicker is the poor man’s MacBook Air? Just a hair. The Dell Studio 14z measures 0.79 inches thick to the MacBook Air’s 0.67 inches thick. It’s also adds a little more oomf to the backpack, weighing 4.3 pounds to the Air’s 3.0 pounds.

Unfortunately, unlike both the latest crop of netbooks and ultra-light notebooks akin to the Air, this one has no optical drive, so Junior won’t be watching DVDs or installing software from CDs without picking up an external model.

The most basic Studio 14z sells for $649, but coddling parents and overzealous kids can stack the price north of $1,200 with upgraded processors, displays, memory, hard drives and colors: (it’s available in black, red, blue, green, purple and pink, but any besides black will cost you an extra $40). More information is available at Dell.