The NEC LaVie Z isn't the lightest laptop ever made, but it's hard to believe that when you pick it up: the 2.2-pound notebook has a lithium-magnesium alloy frame that you'd swear was filled with air rather than the latest Intel Ivy Bridge silicon. We got our hands on the ultrabook at an Intel showcase at Computex Taipei this week, and we weren't just impressed by the lack of weight. The LaVie Z is also so thin that it can just barely house its full-size HDMI and USB ports, handsome, nicely rigid, and looks like it might come with a decent (and decently high-res) 1600 x 900 resolution screen. Things aren't completely rosy, though: the prototype we tried had an exceptionally shallow keyboard and a rather unresponsive touchpad. NEC announced today that it will be configurable with either a 1.7GHz Core i5-3317U or a 1.9GHz Core i7-3517U processor. It's just a shame we may never see it again outside its native Japan, when it ships this summer for an unspecified amount of yen.