Dell Adamo to launch today- is sexy and thin worth it in today’s economy?
(CC) Brian Solis. www.briansolis.com
Dell is expected to finally launch its sexy, thin notebook, the Adamo, today. This laptop has been hotly anticipated, and Dell has even played a few viral marketing schemes to fuel the buzz. The Adamo is designed to go after the crowd willing to pay for thin, sexy portability with a starting price of almost $2000, and Dell may be playing a game of chicken with the down economy with the timing of this product release.
The Dell Adamo is certainly good-looking and is as thin as any Windows-based notebook around. It is a svelte 0.65 inches thick with a 13.4-inch screen and it only comes in a couple of configurations, something unusual for Dell, who is known for custom configurability of their notebooks.
Many are comparing the Adamo to Apple’s MacBook Air: a logical comparison due to the sleek design of both. The Adamo is thinner than the Air, weighs in at 4-pounds compared to the MacBook Air’s 3-pounds and starts at $200 higher than the Air. It will be interesting to see how this expensive notebook plays out in this economy with folks concerned about spending money.
Brian Solis got to see a brand new Adamo at SXSW and has posted some great photos of the thin notebook on his Flickr page.
(via CrunchGear)
I think it’s a tough sell in this economy. I wish I had sales numbers to look at for the devices in this class, i.e.: MBA, Samsung X360/x460, Lenovo X301, etc… my guess would be that traditional value-based notebooks would be outselling them by an order of magnitude. Looks like a nice notebook though.
Too heavy. Too expensive.
Of course if the extra weight is due to a 24-hour battery, then ok.
Pretty though. I hope to heck at least one of the configs is SSD rather than HDD, otherwise FAIL.
@Heavyharmonies: I don’t believe there is an HDD option which is one of the reasons it costs so much.
It’s certainly one of the nicest looking laptops I’ve ever seen but it weighs too much and the 1.2/1.4Ghz C2D processor options are too slow for 2009. Nice to see them hiding/getting rid of all those awful Intel/Windows stickers.
@Kevin: I agree that laptops that cost more because of their size/looks are unlikely to sell well at the moment but I’d question whether they ever really sell that well compared to other laptops. It would be interesting to see some numbers.
Frankly, I’d rather get a MacBook Air.
The Adamo is too heavy and nice design on the outside is nothing without a nicely designed operating system.
Somehow I also feel that Dell is not able to make computers with good battery life.
My Latitude XT has 6-8hours with the extra battery whereas HP claims 15hours for its 2730p and even without the extra battery, the 2730p spec sheet claims the same runtime that my Dell needs two batteries for.
Sorry, but I’m not impressed at all. The Adamo may be the only computer that can challenge an Apple in terms of design, but still it’s nothing special.
It is more expensive and slower than the MBA. The ethernet port and the extra USB is not enough.
It looks better when it’s not running on that slow CPU and slow graphics system – and that’s a shame.
Why is it so heavy? Its carved out of aluminum, its one of the thinnest laptops on the market, and it doesn’t have a dedicated graphics card/associated cooling, an optical drive, or a mechanical hard drive for gods sake. Is the case lined with lead or something?
This is to say nothing of the price ($200 more than the faster MBA…wow, way to bring the value quotient in a terrible economy, Dell) or the performance/lack thereof (this thing is on par with most 2lb ultraportables, need I say more?).