Dell Adamo Review — Macho Outside, Sissy Inside 144
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."
Article summary nails it (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the article summary nails it.
Bigger, heavier, louder (which, to me, is half the point of something like the air), integrated battery (just like the air), bad performance, higher price... what's the point?
It's nice looking, but it sounds like an Air is a much better all around computer. The only thing in it's favor is the higher max RAM (Apple will probably change that) and the integrated 3G option (I'd expect Apple to change that too). Gizmodo is also right that nVidia's next chipset for netbooks will outperform this, at 1/5th the price. It has eSata too though, which is a plus.
Nice try Dell. It is certainly very nice visually. But you need some substance to go with that, or at least a cheaper price point.
Re:Which is it? Cheap, Fast, or Pretty? (Score:5, Insightful)
Your entire post would make sense if only one thing were true. If this PC weren't MORE expensive than the closest Mac counterpart, you could excuse poor build quality, under-powered processor, and heftiness as merely being good value for dollar. But that's not true. It's MORE EXPENSIVE than the Air. A slim laptop that's more pricey than the already overpriced status symbol that is the Macbook Air, but provides significantly less value? Somebody failed, and failed hard.
Re:I've already said so (Score:4, Insightful)
A lot of us like netbooks precisely because they don't have full size keyboards or screens.
Re:Article summary nails it (Score:3, Insightful)
Bigger, heavier, louder (which, to me, is half the point of something like the air), integrated battery (just like the air), bad performance, higher price... what's the point?
And despite this, the anti-Mac fanatics will continue to claim that a Mac is always more expensive than a PC with comparable specs.
Re:Adamo from Dell (Score:3, Insightful)
Why are you even bothering comparing a 17 or 18" gaming hunk of junk with a 13" ultra-thin?
Anyone Else Bothered ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I've already said so (Score:4, Insightful)
"An ounce in the morning is a pound in the evening." - Old hiking adage.
If you're paying good money for laptop that focuses on portability weight is rather important.
At first, you think the people that cut down the handles of their toothbrush to save weight are rather nuts. Then you find out that all their crazy methods of shaving off weight from individual items actually ends up to a noticeable reduction in overall weight.
The same principles applies to more work related traveling. If you can shave off a pound here, a few ounces there, eventually you're commuting with a noticeably lighter load.
Off topic: why GHz? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a genuine question, not a troll. I'm really interested in the answer.
What is the meaning of comparing the GHz as a major factor in evaluation of a laptop? I'm a bioinformatician. I do most of my work on an X40 Thinkpad. For small jobs, this is more than sufficient. For major calculations, one or two cores will not suffice, no matter what the GHz.
From my experience, for most of the tasks, a difference of even 10% in the speed is not an issue, and anyway, there are dozens of other factors that influence both, the real computing speed and the reactivity of the interface. To me, things like memory, disk access, networking, cacheing, usage pattern and last but not least, what software solution you have picked for your task seem to be more influencial on the overall perfomance than a difference between 1.6 or 1.86 GHz. Yet in most comparisons (e.g. several posts here on Slashdot), when talking of a laptop, first two things to mention are the price tag and the GHz.
Question: am I missing something? What is so important about the GHz of the processor to use it as a proxy for "performance"? Is it just historical, or maybe because it is easy to quantify, like in the case of megapixels in digital cameras (which are nowadays mostly meaningless, but easy to compare)?
j.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Which is it? Cheap, Fast, or Pretty? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I've already said so (Score:1, Insightful)
And we wonder where the obesity epidemic came from!
I've got friends who play sports wearing weight vests. They can outrun and outjump anybody else on the field even when wearing 40 lbs of metal.
Then I've got friends who walk around with super-light laptops. They pay hundreds of dollars more to save carrying an extra pound of metal to the coffee shop for their latte. They are, to put it mildly, not in as good shape as the former group.
Do we really need *lighter* machines?
Even if you need to optimize for weight, the first rule of optimization is to *profile*. If you've got enough weight for it to matter, then your laptop is (a) a relatively small percentage of it, and (b) a really expensive thing to lighten.
Re:Article summary nails it (Score:4, Insightful)
how unfairly some fictional 'anti-Mac fanatics' will respond
Fictional? GMAFB. Read any /. story that can possibly, in any way, be interpreted as having something to do with Apple, and you'll see plenty of this fanaticism on display.