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Dell's Adamo Goes After MacBook Air
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Mar 17, 2009 05:45 PM
from the what-would-michael-do dept.
from the what-would-michael-do dept.
MojoKid writes "Adamo, pronounced 'A-dahm-o,' means 'to fall in love with' in Latin. Dell is certainly hoping you'll fall in love with this notebook's looks as well as its functionality. The Adamo's chassis is milled from a single piece of aluminum and features precision detailing with a scalloped backlit keyboard. Even the fan holes, which are punched out squares, have an attractive modern design. The Adamo features a thin 0.65-inch profile and weighs four pounds. The new ultra-portable will also offer Intel Core 2 Duo processors and DDR3 memory (up to 4GB), a 13.4-inch 16:9 HD display and a 128GB SSD hard drive. Pricing starts at $1,999 with Vista Ultimate 64." The Dell infomercial spokesmodel (video at the bottom of the link) concludes, "Adamo resulted from the union of technology with pleasure for the style-conscious individualist." OK, so he's no Steve Jobs.
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Dell Adamo Review — Macho Outside, Sissy Inside 144 comments
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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Can you change the battery? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think that's the question people want to know.
Re:Can you change the battery? (Score:5, Informative)
No. You actually have to send it in. Really.
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Re:Can you change the battery? (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, I own and regularly use 2 laptops, and I can count the number of times I've removed the battery on zero hands. It's not a big deal to me.
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Re:Can you change the battery? (Score:5, Funny)
I took my batteries out to save the weight.
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Last time, pointless (Score:5, Insightful)
Every time a sealed device (iPhone, Air) comes up someone likes you brings up the external battery.
Such a pointless question though. Who cares when an external power pack the a laptop can run from takes the same amount of space as the spare battery would have? The ONLY time you ever need one of these things is really long air travel, when you're in steerage without a plug. Even when traveling in the deepest heart of Africa I didn't need a spare battery because I just charged off the car we were traveling with (and yes in fact I did need a laptop it was not just some electronic toy I could not live without).
As for replacing it, since you do that once every few years I can't see that as a serious concern.
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Four pounds? (Score:4, Interesting)
My one and a half year old vaio SZ weighs less than that (about 3 pounds) and isn't all that thick.
Re:Four pounds? (Score:5, Funny)
yes, but it's a sony...
And you know what they say : "better safe than Sony".
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I am disappointed (Score:5, Funny)
"Adamo resulted from the union of technology with pleasure...."
A laptop is not the first thing I thought of when seeing that phrase. Not that sort of laptop, at least.
Re:I am disappointed (Score:5, Informative)
It's clearly trying to be the Mac "meet the designers" segment (right down to the foreign sounding artistic designer), but it ends up more like a parody of one.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=QUJqWc6seYk [youtube.com]
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Re:I am disappointed (Score:5, Funny)
O M F G... did you catch the "unboxing" bit? A plain fucking brown cardboard box?!?!? (At the 30-second mark.) Dude--if it's a plain-ass cardboard box, don't show it in the ad! My only guess is that this was done by some guys who got some advance knowlege of impending layoffs at Dell that snuck into their boss' office and saw their pink slips in his drawer.
Yeah, I'm sure this is really keeping Steve Jobs up nights. Maybe this was Mike's plan--to have Steve die in a laughing fit. Steve's probably conference-calling Phil Schiller and Tim Cook right now, saying "You know, I'm gonna retire early. You guys will be fine without me."
OK, just finished the video... so it's two pounds heavier than the Air and still no optical drive?!?!? The ports can't weight that much. What the fuck is it made from, lead?
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Re:I am disappointed (Score:5, Funny)
I'm pretty sure the writer for that just won a bar bet with his friends.
"Adamo was created to elicit desire and redefine the image of power."
-Are we talking about a penis here?
"Once you hold it, you won't want to put it down."
-Yup, definitely a penis.
"People will stare and that's OK."
-I do what I can for the world.
"Because with this ultra-thin, portable aphrodisiac at your side, lack of attention won't be a problem."
-Wait... ultra-thin? Staring is no longer OK. =(
"The whole product just feels very solid."
-Now we're talking. I'll just let that last remark slide.
"We wanted to make sure the product appealed equally to women and men."
-...
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Sounded pretty good... (Score:5, Insightful)
An Adamo without Vista (Score:5, Funny)
An Adamo without Vista is like chocolate cake without mustard.
Give me the computer without slathering it up with old smelly mayonnaise, please. Thanks.
$1999 with "Vista" (Score:5, Funny)
Could I maybe get it for $1000 without Vista?
poor latin (Score:5, Informative)
""Adamo, pronounced 'A-dahm-o,' means 'to fall in love with' in Latin."
phhh, as any fule knos, it really means 'I fall in love with' if they had wanted it to mean 'to fall in love with' it should be called 'adamare'
come on, this is a basic 1st conjugation verb with a preposition, basic stuff.
Re:poor latin (Score:4, Interesting)
In their defense, there is a long-standing tradition of confusing the "dictionary form" (i.e. first person singular) of a verb with the infinitive. Other examples of this phenomenon are the words audio and video which are commonly claimed to mean "to hear" and "to see".
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Re:poor latin (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:poor latin (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Oblig. Python (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:poor latin (Score:4, Interesting)
As sibling posts have noted, it's traditional to make a direct mapping between the English "dictionary" form, which is the infinitive, and the Latin "dictionary" form, which is the first person singular.
More puzzling to me is where they got the idea that it means "fall in love with". It means "love earnestly"; that's a perfectly acceptable meaning, so why not quote that one?
Also I wonder where the submitter got the idea that the pronunciation ought to be "a-dahm-o". That may be how Dell are pronouncing it, but in Latin the ictus is on the first syllable: "a-dah-mo". Both the first two syllables are short, guys.
Just for the sake of completeness, here's [uchicago.edu] the entry on adamo in the best (not most recent; best) Latin-English dictionary.
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I can picture it now... (Score:5, Funny)
Dell Ad Exec #1: We need a foreign spokesman to give our product a refined cosmopolitan vibe. We can save some money by using an employee.
Exec #2: How about one of mexican janitors?
Exec #3: How about one of our indian support staff?
Dell Ad Exec #1: Ok, maybe not. I think my cock-tease secretary mentioned her boyfriend was European. That's close enough.
Dell has sold out to Marketing (Score:5, Informative)
"get ready to witness a true love story by Dell"
"machined aluminum"
"Adamo resulted from the union of technology with pleasure, for the style conscious individualist" (woahoah! Any guess what their target market is? Any? at all?)
"machined aluminum" (they seemed to be quite proud of that point)
"ultra-thin portable aphrodisiac" (oh yes, they actually said that!)
Adamo. For all your computer love needs. I guess.
All your love needs (Score:5, Funny)
Adamo. For all your computer love needs. I guess.
New slogan: "Adamo. There's a port for that."
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Re:All your love needs (Score:5, Funny)
Adamo. For all your computer love needs. I guess.
New slogan: "Adamo. There's a port for that."
Adamo. It's like a MacBook Air, but crappier.
Adamo. Apple's price, Dell's quality.
Adamo. Because we saw Vista running on a MacBook Air once.
Adamo. Because "Adammit" probably wouldn't sell well.
Adamo. If we really knew Latin, we wouldn't be working for Dell now would we?
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Re:All your love needs (Score:5, Funny)
Adamo. Because we heard geeks really dig Battlestar Galactico.
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Re:All your love needs (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't really like the Apple notebooks except for the MacBook Pro. All the others look like eeePC cheap plastic toy laptops. But, MacBook pros are $2000+.
You must have missed the fact that current Macbook models are machined from a solid block of aluminum, just like the Macbook Pros.
The other reason I don't like MacBooks is that it seems that people who use them seem have fallen in love with their laptop. They always want to have it on and in front of them at all times - always claketing around this or that.
What a strange thing to say. You don't like a certain model of laptop, because its users seem to enjoy using them? Would you rather buy a model which the users are frustrated with, and don't use very much because they are a hassle?
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But... (Score:3, Interesting)
niche market (Score:3, Interesting)
Modell (n): thin, fashionable, overpriced and only for those select few of the society whose vision often overlooks function for form.
this is just bling for the glitterati. like those diamond studded cell phones, they target a niche crowd that can afford to be extravagant. In these days of $300 netbooks (and weighing ~2 lbs), very few regular buyers would plunk down 2G for a laptop; Macbook Air was partly justified in its price point when it came out but it has lost its relevance in today's market, I find it hard to conceive Dell considering this a mainstream product.
Thank You Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
First we had Microsoft making efforts to change the look of their desktop to be something less "ugly" (a characterisation that even Bill Gates used) that took a wrong turn with XP but resulted in something reasonably coherent and possibly attractive in Vista (and its cousin, Vista SP1). Now we have Dell setting aside their traditional look (a make-it-up as-you-go-along aesthetic designed to appeal to one's inner ricer so those cheap-assed plastic/metal boxes with an in-your-face logo would actually sell) for something that actually looks like it was "designed".
Hell, based on the looks, I'd even consider buying one. Someone would first have to convince me that during assembly, the internals weren't selected from a grab bag of parts taken from a randomly changing supplier list, though.
So, kudos to Dell. But let's face it: the real credit belongs to Apple who forced everyone to adopt a higher standard.
Up to $2700 for Adamo (Score:3, Insightful)
Hey, Apple is the only one who offers "high-priced" laptops.
What is going on here?
Re:Up to $2700 for Adamo (Score:5, Insightful)
Didn't Sony start first with their VAIO line?
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And people bitch about Apple? (Score:5, Insightful)
So it costs more than the Air, but has a crappier chipset. It does have more ports, which is good, and unlike the Air it can hold 4GB of RAM. It's also a little bigger, a little heavier, and it has way less processor in it. Plus it comes with Vista - though it's at least the x64 edition, it still will have that much more in driver compatibility issues as a result, and it's still only a Home edition. For that kind of coin, you'd think they would at least provide Ultimate.
And how again is this Dell's MacBook Air killer? The best thing I can say about it so far is it's a little better-looking than most Dell laptops. But I think they're going to sell about 3 of these.
Re:And people bitch about Apple? (Score:4, Funny)
It's a MacBook Air killer because, at 4 pounds, if you drop it on the Air a few times, the Air will probably break first.
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Not even Sony would try this (Score:5, Interesting)
Lately, I have been seeing TV commercials from Dell that say, using imagery, "stand in line to buy this and you will come out groovy and cool." Perhaps they are attempting to take a page from Apple's play-book, but the problem is that Apple's established image and Dell's established image are very different. You don't just pop up out of nowhere and say "hey! suddenly we're cool hipsters!" If Dell wants to become that, they will have to evolve their image, not manufacture it. And there has to be a LOT (and I mean excessively) of good will directed at the consumer before they will buy into it.
Dell is best known for business machines. What's more, Dell is nearly anti-consumer in that the care offered to consumers is a LOT less than care offered to businesses. They need to reverse this condition before people will ever think of Dell as anything else.
I have some ideas I hope Dell takes to heart, but they don't listen to people like me. But if Dell wants to REALLY get into the eye-candy end of things, offer up and electronic ink display on the back of the display that can be customized by the user. And with the interesting legal progress being made by the Mac-clone people, Dell ought to be preparing to blast out a Mac compatible of their own. Sure, don't market it that way... just put whatever is needed to make it Mac compatible in the machine and let hackers out there figure out the rest. (The Dell Mini9 is rather popular with people into Hackintoshes)
There are a lot of ways Dell could become what they seek to be, but simply jumping right out into the middle and saying "HEY! LOOK AT ME!" ain't gonna do it.
Late to the party and underwhelming... (Score:5, Insightful)
Using Intel's 4500 series? OK, so graphics are not its forte.
It actually cost more than the Air and gives less power? Processor speeds are lackluster as well.
You just have to hate Apple to buy this over the Air. I am not a fanboi of Apple, I do have an iMac (7600gt variety) and a Touch, but damn I always thought Apple notebooks overpriced cases with average internals...
So what happened? What are they truly aiming at? This new laptop of theirs is practically a sales pitch for the Air.
Now, if it started at 1299 then it might be worth looking at...
Sorry, but I really don't understand how this shipped at its price point, especially with such a weak feature set compared to its obvious competition. Slower processors, 1/3rd the speed in graphics, oh I will just stop there.
Oh, Blu-Ray, well it has something at least I cannot do on an Apple...
Great, I am going to have to check myself in at Apple's Fanboi Anonymous group after posting this.
Dell makes a (Score:4, Insightful)
thin, nice stylish laptop, and it's expensive.
Remember that next time you whine about Apples prices.
Nugget alert (Score:5, Funny)
That's ADMIRAL Adamo to you, nugget.
Re:Nugget alert (Score:5, Funny)
Nonsense. We all know a Dell Adama would have no networking.
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Holy mother of God, this is lame (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.youtube.com:80/watch?v=QUJqWc6seYk [youtube.com]
How can they do this? How can this get out of the marketing department at Dell without someone getting fired, or sued, or a stop-payment notice put on their last paycheck at least?
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Re:Holy mother of God, this is lame (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, holy shit. Marketing a product as being cool and hip is the least cool, most deeply unhip thing they could have done. Fuck firings, I'm surprised there haven't been any suicides.
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Re:Holy mother of God, this is lame (Score:5, Funny)
Money quote right there, baby!
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Re:Holy mother of God, this is lame (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, that's pretty crazy.
Compare to this:http://www.apple.com/macbook/the-new-macbook/
Dell even put a foreigner in front of a white background to talk about the design, except he's all out of focus. It's like a retarded copy made by amateurs, filled with marketing speak. "the union of technology with pleasure for the style-conscious individualist"? What the hell does that mean? It was "created to elicit desire and re-define the image of power"? "ultra-thin portable aphrodisiac"?
At best, it looks like it should be the rough draft that their marketing people mocked up as the pitch for some kind of ad. If Dell can't do better than this, then Apple deserves to own the reality distortion field.
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A focus on function (Score:5, Insightful)
For all the joking about how Apple is for effete fashion victims, the biggest difference I noticed from the Dell video is that the Apple video focuses almost entirely on functional design. In the Apple video, they don't say they use aluminum because it's sexy, they say it's used to provide rigidity for light weight. Instead of a fancy apartment we see industrial manufacturing. There's no spokesmodel (all the speakers are staff/management at Apple), and the only model is seen only for a few seconds at the end. There's no talk of fashion or aphrodisiac or etched patterns for looks.
I think Dell is totally misreading the market if they think there is going to a big demand for the Adamo based just on how hot and fashionable it looks. That's especially true now...I think conspicuous consumption went out as a life goal for most people about 6 months ago. And even if people are willing to spend that much on a notebook, the way to get to their pocketbooks is to focus on the high-end quality of the product. It's the same reason people buy $450 Gore-Tex coats to walk their dog, or $55,000 SUVs to drive the kids to school.
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Re:Holy mother of God, this is lame (Score:5, Funny)
http://www.youtube.com:80/watch?v=QUJqWc6seYk [youtube.com]
Slashdot, the only website where people actually put the port number in links...
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Re:Holy mother of God, this is lame (Score:4, Informative)
From the online ordering page for the advanced model, hope this helps:
Processor Intel® Core(TM)2 Duo Processor SU9400 (1.4GHz/800MHz FSB/3M L2 Cache)
Memory 4GB Dual-channel 800MHz DDR3 SDRAM (2 x 2GB)
Keyboard Dell(TM) Backlit Keyboard with Touchpad
Video Card Integrated Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator X4500MHD
Hard Drive 128GB Solid State Hard Drive
Operating System Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium (64-bit)
Wireless Network Card Intel(R) WiFi Link 5300 (802.11a/g/n)
Bluetooth Dell(TM) Wireless 370 Bluetooth 2.1 Module
Primary Battery 6-Cell (40WHr) Li-Ion Primary Battery
Mobile Broadband Dell Wireless 5530 HSDPA3.6 mobile broadband mini-card for Vodafone
Item included in the System Internal 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet
Item included in the System DisplayPort Output with External DVI Adapter Included
LCD Premium Onyx Black Finish with 13.4" 720p WLED (1366x768) HD Display with 1.3 mega pixel web cam
Power Supply 45W AC Adapter
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Re:Eevrybody's SURE to get in line for that... (Score:5, Funny)
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Apple, the masters of lock-in. (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple is still the only computer maker that understands the value of integrated hardware and software design. No piecemeal computer kit thrown together by others will ever quite match the integrated holistic approach of Apple products.
You could have said that Apple has mastered lock-in while appearing to be open.
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Re:Nice (Score:4, Insightful)
While I agree that 2GB being non-upgradable in the MacBook Air is an oversight, to be honest 2GB is still a fairly hefty amount of RAM. My old MacBook Pro has 2GB and rarely uses more than half of it under Leopard. In fact, Leopard on my old iBook G4 with 640MB works pretty well so 2GB is plenty for OS X. On the other hand, if you're talking about Vista then 2GB is a bit tight. It is funny when people compare specs between PCs and Macs and don't consider that the difference in performance between OS X and Vista can make a much bigger difference than whether one has 4GB or the other has 2GB.
I fully expect my MacBook Pro (just coming up to 3 years old) to serve me well for another few years at least before it needs to be replaced. Not one of my PC laptops has ever lasted me more than a year since I am very hard on my machines. As you say, I wouldn't trust Dell to be able to make a machine that can withstand the daily use my laptops get put through.
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Re:While this is the awesome... (Score:5, Insightful)
It'd probably run great if apple would allow it.
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Re:Not exactly pretty (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, laptops still have ports on the back?
Ports on the side? The right side is where I keep my coffee, and a mouse that I try not to use. The left side is where I keep my pad, a calculator, a book or two or three, and an ashtray for when I get tired of whatever I'm doing. The back, on the other hand, is dead space, all the way across the table to the wall. Why not use the back?
What a PITA! I thought side or front ports were pretty standard now.
They, as are a lack of serial ports. If you want, I can bitch about that, too. ;-)
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