Dell has just responded to the Macbook Air with its launch of the Adamo. The Adamo has met tons of hype on the blogosphere since Dell's exhibit at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. Does it deliver? Well, the Adamo is 13.03 inches wide, 9.5 inches deep and uniformly o.65 inches thick, as compared to the Air's 12.8 inch width, 8.94 inch depth, and average thickness of 0.46 inches. So does this mean that the Adamo won't fit into Steve Jobs now famous manila envelope? In short, yes. First, the Adamo is one pound heavier than the Air, weight which Wired's blogger adds "makes itself felt." So what do you get with these extra fractions of an inch and poundage? Dell's Adamo comes with comes with a 1.2 GHz Intel Core2Duo processor, 2 GB memory, a 128GB hard drive, along with 2 USB ports. Reps from the company said that the goal of the Adamo was not to create the most lightweight notebook (citing its 2-pound Latitude for that accomplishment), but to find the highest quality balance between weight, size, and ability. Personally, I think the coolest thing about the Adamo is its keyboard, which Wired refers to as "scalloped." Basically, all the keys are almost completely flat and touching, with each letter or symbol neatly centered on each square tile. For the guitar-video game inclined, the Adamo's keys are similar to the keys on the Rock Band guitars, as compared to the standard computer's keyboard, which I'd compare to those of the Guitar Hero guitars.
While the Macbook Air officially ranges from $2,499 to $1,799, I found offers as low as $2,399 and $1,299 (!) for new versions of the Air's respective models on Amazon. On the other hand, the Adamnthatsexpensivemo has a price tag of $2,700 for the works or $2,000 for just the meat. While I'm sure PCers have been waiting to have an Air-equivalent to call their own, myself more or less included, I got my current HP (that I love) for just over $800 with a two year all inclusive warranty.
I think I'll hold out for the lightweight HP.
The battle between Dell and Apple over the smallest and thinnest laptop perplexes me. Although there is no end to the hype online, the bottom line is that the market of potential buyers of these laptops is very small. There is a big difference between fanboys who find the new machines slick, and an actual customer who purchases one. What it comes down to is that few people are willing to pay a premium for a laptop with a moderately large screen that skimps on features. For example, a major complaint of both laptops is the lack of an included cd drive (you need to connect an external one via USB), and an overall lack of ports.
ReplyDeleteThe netbook market has already captured the cheap and small segment of the notebook market, but I think that Dell and Apple are shooting for a customer base that is much smaller than they would have hoped.