The Dell Adamo is a beautiful, gorgeous, willowy notebook-cum-sculpture that’s not easy to resist on an impulse buy. Dell’s decision to break the pivotal four-figure mark makes it even harder. As of now, the Aspire model in the Adamo lineup is all yours for the base price of $999.
Dell’s Adamo XPS is quite the machine, but it also has an eye-watering price. Happily the company have decided to borrow some of the Adamo style for a more entry-level model, in the shape of the new Dell Vostro V13. A 13.3-inch ultraportable measuring 0.65-inches thick and tipping the scales at under 3.5lbs, the Vostro V13 offers a choice of Intel CULV processors and kicks off at a frankly hard-to-believe $450.
Video demo after the cut
I wrote this column on the Nokia Booklet 3G which is, in my opinion, the most luxurious looking netbook on the market. And for its $600 ($299 with a pretty expensive 2 year AT&T contract) it sure as heck should be. The aluminum unibody design feels as solid as a freshly pumped up tire, and its brushed metal palm rest isn’t only minimalistic but is also smooth on the hands. The plastic coated keys are soft to the touch and the higher 1280 by 720 resolution screen is sweet on the eyes. And don’t forget the built in AT&T 3G that kept me connected as I wrote in different coffee shops around New York City.
Aesthetically the Booklet has got the goods, but performance wise not so much. While using the Booklet for the last week or so I had to get used to the netbook taking at least a minute to boot up Windows 7 Starter (thanks to its slow 4,200 rpm hard drive), and stalling at times when trying to open an application or simply loading a Flash video (thanks to its sluggish Atom Z530 processor). The Booklet 3G is like the stereotypical blonde — pretty but slow.
Dell’s Adamo XPS is certainly a striking piece of tech – any notebook that thin is going to grab our attention, and that’s before you add in a spytastic touch-strip to open it – but it turns out the company had even more ambitious plans initially. PC World managed to score some time with some of Dell’s Adamo XPS prototypes, including versions with multitouch LCD trackpads and even a zero-profile touchscreen keyboard.
We’ve seen it teased and we’ve seen the first photos, but today Dell is finally giving us the skinny (pun intended) on the thinnest notebook ever – the Dell Adamo XPS. The 9.99 mm thin notebook, which will be shipping in time for the holidays, will inevitably be compared to Apple’s Macbook Air and no doubt it is thinner, but the starting $1,800 price tag won’t make it cheaper.
After the cut: Dell Adamo XPS hands-on impressions, gallery, and video
What’s particularly frustrating about Dell’s ongoing teaser campaign for the Adamo XPS is that it’s not as though their new ultraportable would go short of attention with a regular launch: how many people – geeks or otherwise – would turn their noses up at a 9.9mm thick notebook? Still, the latest trickle of information comes in the form of two new photos, showing the Adamo XPS’ unusual hinge and minimal port selection.
It’s a frankly astonishing time to start a teaser campaign – right smack in the middle of an Apple event – but Dell were obviously so upset by Apple’s snook-cocking at their netbook range that they wanted to show off their upcoming super-skinny Adamo XPS. The 9.99mm thick notebook has no specs, no details and no price, but then again it wouldn’t be much of a teaser if everything was on a plate for you, would it.
Dell’s Adamo is admirable for a Windows ultraportable, but when they snuck glances over at Apple’s notebook range they really should’ve stopped before they got to the prices. $1,999 was simply more than most people were willing to pay; happily Dell have finally realized that, and cut the entrance price to their Adamo range to $1,499.
One of the reasons Dell could keep the Adamo packaging so compact is because the luxury ultraportable ships with the battery already fitted. It’s a good job, too, as it turns out that the power pack for the 13-inch MacBook Air rival is non-user-replaceable, meaning once it has reached the end of its usable life (a figure Dell are not making any claims about) owners will need to send their Adamo back in to have it replaced.
Headlines this week were a tussle between Apple’s iPhone OS 3.0 announcement and the launch of the Dell Adamo luxury ultraportable. We were pleased to see SlashGear readers in their thousands join us for our Apple liveblog and, while there may have been no new hardware, the features hitting the iPhone over the Summer – MMS, A2DP Bluetooth, copy & paste, and Spotlight, to name but a few – could keep the smartphone well ahead of the competition. That’s not what Palm wanted to hear; we ran through the key differences between the iPhone OS 3.0 and Palm Pre at our sibling-site My Pre.
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