Dell XPS 12 review: A clever convertible Ultrabook

Touch actions on the display all work well, although the press-to-click touchpad was more finicky than I expected. It registers a click best if you press near the bottom of the pad, where a touchpad's physical buttons are normally found. Also, while many of the Windows 8 touch actions are emulated via touchpad behaviors, some of them have a hair trigger. For example, the side-swiping gesture to swap apps kept firing even when I wasn't doing anything remotely resembling a side-swipe on the touchpad. I had to shut off that gesture completely to keep the system from channel surfing between apps. (I suspect that many of these issues can be fixed with a touchpad software upgrade.)

Typing is quite comfortable. The Chiclet-style keys, my favorite layout, don't have the kind of full-blown mechanical action I've seen in, say, Sony's notebooks, but they're good for long-form productivity. The backlighting can also be dimmed or shut off completely with a function key. One minor keyboard gripe: I had to hit the spacebar dead center to make sure it registered a keystroke. I'm used to tapping the outer edges of the bar, but that didn't always work here.

Since Ultrabooks lack an integrated optical drive, Dell's tool for generating recovery media can use an external USB drive as its target. You'll need at least 5.76GB of free space to back up the base system, so make sure you have at least an 8GB flash drive handy. I was grateful for the relative absence of bloatware shoveled into the system, barring the Intel networking and Dell systems management tools.

Clever engineering makes the Dell XPS 12 a slick fusion of Windows 8 tablet and notebook form factors. The downsides -- a hefty price tag and the lack of Ethernet jack and disk activity light -- detract only slightly from this highly usable and lightweight Ultrabook.

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