With the relaunch of their XPS branding, Dell has released quite a few interesting laptops during the past three quarters. Their latest addition to the line is the thin XPS 15z, and if you haven’t read or heard about it yet let’s be clear: it takes more than a few design cues from Apple’s MacBook Pro 15. We could also look at the HP Envy line and say that Dell borrows a few ideas there as well—though admittedly, "let's make a thin laptop with an aluminum exterior" isn't exactly a revolution in industrial design concepts. The result is still something different than what Apple and HP offer, but if imitation is a form of flattery, Apple in particular should be feeling quite pleased right now. When we get to the details, however, the outward similarities start to disappear.

The 15z might look something like a MacBook Pro 15, but the options are different from what you’ll get out of Cupertino. Some of the changes are for the better, some are merely a different take on what hardware works best, and others are for the worse. We also need to point out the major advantage Dell holds over the MBP15: the base model 15z starts at just $999; even with the 1080p upgrade, it’s only $1099. Pricing as usual isn’t somewhere that Apple competes. The result is a laptop that might just be everything you’ve been looking for as you prepare to head back to school, or it might leave you wanting more. Which category you fall into will depend on how you want to use your laptop, so join us as we dig into the 15z and find out what makes it tick.

Just over ten months ago, we had a chance to take a look at a very big, reasonably impressive mobile workstation: HP's EliteBook 8740w. It sported HP's DreamColor IPS screen at a glorious 1920x1200 resolution and had fairly beefy hardware under the hood, including the at-the-time fastest mobile workstation GPU, the NVIDIA Quadro 5000M. But since HP unveiled the dramatic redesign of their enterprise notebooks earlier this year, we've been anxiously anticipating the 8740w's refresh. Today we have it, specced to kill with a shiny new DreamColor IPS screen, Sandy Bridge quad-core processor, and an even faster NVIDIA Quadro GPU.

The past year has seen the vast majority of mainstream notebooks with discrete graphics shift to NVIDIA's Optimus, and with the W150HR Clevo makes the move as well. Equipped with GT 555M DDR3 graphics and sporting an i7-2720QM and Intel 510 SSD, MYTHLOGIC's Pollux 1400 variant packs in a lot of performance. What's more, it has one of the best LCD's we've tested: a matte 1080p LCD with high color gamut and great viewing angles. If you've been looking for a laptop that can handle just about anything, this could be it.

Of course, there's more to a laptop than the raw specs, and build quality and keyboard layout have been issues on Clevo designs for as long as I've been testing them. They're not the worst in the business, but considering the cost and target market there are certainly other alternatives. So how does MYTHLOGIC's offering stack up to the competition? Let's find out.