Dell Adamo Review — Macho Outside, Sissy Inside

Odelia Lee writes with a full review of Dell's new Adamo slimtop over at Gizmodo. While it may have an sleek exterior there are definite gaps (both literal and figurative) in their engineering. "The Adamo is both a compliment and an insult to Dell engineering. It's possibly the most beautiful computer Dell has ever manufactured, but I'm not sure that Dell has caught up to competitors in either aesthetics or power. There have been lots of qualitative Adamo reviews out there, but we got the first of the units that will actually ship to customers, so it's time for real benchmarks. As it happens, performance is really what's at stake here."

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Re:Article summary nails it

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Hardware design is very hard. Apple has 30 years experience at designing very nice hardware that works, essentially from scratch. Dell has a little more than 20 years experience putting commodity components together to make a PC to be sold at low price points. Even MS, with all it's resources, has trouble actually making hardware that people are actually willing to pay for. The only one in Apples class right now is HP. Alas, much of the stuff falls into the category of cheap PC or too expensive pro. They seem to have trouble controlling costs. I have a beautiful 15" laptop from HP, but it cost as much as the 17" laptop from Apple.

So this is pretty much par for the course. I don't know how much it is going to effect the Macbook Air, simply because Apple does not believe in selling computers based on the number of ports. I like the idea of wireless, but would hope that it would not be just ATT because there are some cheaper deals out there, unless we can use it as part of out iPhone plan, or just a nominal additional cost. Sure, that will happen, it will be another $40. In any case, the battery life of the Air is not so great, and I suspect that broadband might bring it to an hour.

Right now the Air is 2 GB memory, standard. When the 4GB chips become cheap enough, and there is enough battery power, and if heating is not an issue, I suspect we will see that upgrade.

The Dell machine is probably a good choice for someone who need to run windows on the road. The market is those who are willing to pay for a lighter laptop, and the selling point is not going to price or weight or any of those things. It is that you can run Windows and play on the internet wherever you are, and it will be a good experience. The average net-book cannot say that. The air could probably do that using boot camp and an external drive, but that is not nearly as nice of a solution.