If a psychologist grabbed you off the street for a word-association test, the results might go something like this.

“I’m going to provide some adjectives, and I want you to respond either ‘Apple’ or ‘Dell’ to each one. Whatever comes to mind. Are you comfortable?”

“Yes, doctor.”

“All right, then, let’s begin: Cheap.”

“Dell.”

“Luxury.”

“Apple.”

“Sleek design.”

“Apple.”

“Plastic.”

“Dell.”

Am I right?

Somebody at Dell must have gotten sick and tired of that rap, because the company’s new 2015 XPS 13 laptop represents the biggest design shift in laptops since the MacBook Air: Dell has crammed a 13-inch screen into the body of an 11-inch laptop.

How? By eliminating the fat border around the screen.

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The beauty of small

This is an enormously important step, because this is the age of giant smartphones and tablets. Laptops are infinitely faster to type on, and they run much more capable software — but who’s going to haul around one of those two-inch-thick, sharp-edged black plastic boxes anymore? If laptops are going to compete, they’d better start approaching the sleek, thin, light lines of a tablet.

The Dell does.

The keyboard “deck” is made of carbon fiber, which looks great and, unlike the Space bar and other keys, resists fingerprints and grease.

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It also helps explain how this machine can weigh only 2.6 pounds (or 2.8 pounds if you want a touchscreen). That’s lighter than rivals like the Acer Aspire S7 (2.9 pounds), Toshiba Kirabook (2.9 pounds), Samsung Book 9 Plus (3.1 pounds), and, of course, the king of ultrabooks, the MacBook Air (3 pounds).

(“Ultrabook” is what Windows manufacturers call laptops in the same class as the MacBook Air. It means: Thin, light, attractive. Illuminated keys, but no other moving parts aside from a fan. No physical hard drive, but instead a solid-state drive, like a big flash drive. Minimal connectors — audio, USB, video output only. Battery sealed inside. In other words, a sleek, portable machine for writing, editing, and Internetting. Not so much for gaming.)

The Dell measures 12x7.9x0.6 inches. That’s smaller in every dimension than the Toshiba (12.4x8.2x0.7), the Samsung (12.6x8.8x0.5), and the MacBook Air (12.8x9x0.7). The Acer is a hair thinner, but it’s much wider and deeper (12.8x9x0.5).

Look how much smaller the $1,400 Dell (on the right) is than the MacBook Air ($1,200, no touchscreen but comparable specs):

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