Tablets have introduced a number of great features that are currently without equal in the notebook space. They’re ultra light, extremely responsive, have tremendous life of the battery and are generally instant-on devices. Tablets however, aren’t exceptional for being productive on, leaving good reason to still carry around a notebook. As both platforms keep growing you’ll see them learn from one another. Updates towards the tablet experience in iOS 5 for instance are clearly built around improving productivity. How about the notebook PC though? What is being done there to make it more tablet-like? This is where Intel’s Ultrabook category of notebook PCs is necessary.

Ultrabooks today are simply ultra portable notebooks with a few requirements. They need to be thin, light, possess a fast CPU (Sandy Bridge will do for now) and use some form of solid state storage. The SSD requirement helps OEMs guarantee that these Ultrabooks will have reasonable response time (application, boot and wake). Regardless of the tablet comparison, Ultrabooks aren’t meant to go up against ARM based tablets. Intel will ultimately have an Atom powered answer in that space, although we likely won’t view it until Windows 8 ships.

Hardware specs alone aren’t enough to bridge the tablet gap, which is why Intel views new features through software as a major part of the Ultrabook play. Intel expects Ultrabooks won’t really go mainstream until between late 2012-2013, so this first wave of notebooks are actually nothing more than ultraportable PCs. Should you look close enough, they might even look like MacBook Air clones. With the Ivy Bridge and Haswell updates, Intel is expecting to expand the impact of what Ultrabooks mean but today they are pretty much well designed notebooks with a fancy name.

Dell is officially announcing the XPS 14z today, with ordering availability scheduled for November One in the US; worldwide availability will occur November 15. You will see four primary configurations offered at that point, though we’re unsure how much customization is going to be available. Our test unit has 4GB RAM when compared to 6GB that will be shipping; this shouldn’t really make a difference for normal usage, but it’s worth noting. So far as we can tell, all purchases share the same WiFi, DVDRW, and LCD; the CPU, storage, GPU and quantity of memory are where they differ.

The bottom model comes without discrete graphics, while all the upgraded versions include NVIDIA’s GT 520M. We haven’t were built with a chance to look at that GPU yet, and we’re actually thinking about testing it as it doesn’t appear to be it will be much faster compared to HD 3000. 48 CUDA cores having a 64-bit DDR3-1600 memory interface (12.8GB/s) is certainly not to write home about, and DX11 support is nearly meaningless on cheap hardware. However, NVIDIA (and AMD) have better graphics driver support than Intel, so it’s something to think about. We hope to get a second 14z using the upgrade GPU and CPU set for testing to see the way it fares, and it appears like Dell will charge about $100 extra for that GPU upgrade.

Dell packs in just about everything most users will require, including a single USB 3.0 Super Speed port around the back. (I’m not sure why they include just one SS port, because of the second USB port is appropriate next to it.) The inclusion of the optical drive in this thin laptop also warrants mention. Our test unit may be the base model, therefore we don’t have the GeForce GT 520M put into the mix, but that upgrade can be obtained should you want it. Display connectivity can also be reasonable, with a mini DisplayPort along with a full size HDMI port around the back of the laptop.

Way back in the dark day of CES 2011, we were in a position to lay hands on and have fun with some interesting new technology from Toshiba. They’d a prototype notebook available that was capable of glasses-free 3D like the Nintendo 3DS, however with a bigger screen and also the ability to track head movement and adjust viewing angles accordingly. The release of this 3D notebook continues to be an unusually quiet one. May be the 15-inch Qosmio F755 a sound design, or perhaps is there a reason why it has been unceremoniously dropped into the marketplace?

The type of glasses-free 3D that Toshiba employs within the Qosmio F755-3D290 has thus far been mostly limited to handhelds, like the odd 3D smartphone or even the aforementioned Nintendo 3DS. Toshiba even features a reasonably impressive bit of head-tracking technology that will shift the 3D viewing angle so long as the webcam can easily see you, at least once you’ve configured it. Why did Toshiba pretty much sneak this one to the market?

You’ll forgive me for my unprofessionalism, however the best word I’m able to think of for the Toshiba Qosmio F755′s configuration is “wonky.” After i reviewed Toshiba’s all-in-one, the DX735, I praised Toshiba to be able to produce a balanced system configuration which was well-suited to its intended purpose, however the F755 in any of its three shipping configurations may be the polar opposite.