Gadget Friends

Tried of seeing one professed Apple Macbook Air Killer after another, Dell decided to offer its own take on what a luxury brand should look like. The Dell Adamo, is elegant in its thin profile and luxuriously intoxicating to look at. The glass screen , excellent typing experience, and extensive wireless options are pluses. And the reason for its seemingly expensive price is the standard 128GB solid state drive(SSD). When a company proclaims its laptop is the world’s thinnest, as Dell did with the Adamo, comparisons will be drawn between that laptop and the MacBook Air is almost immediate. All around , the Adamo measures 0.65 inches thick, which is about a tenth of an inch thinner than the thickest part of the MacBook Air’s sloping chassis. The Air’s thinnest part measures around 0.16 inch, so making a statement about “thinness” really depends on where you apply the ruler.

When it comes to features, the Adamo one-ups the MacBook Air. To keep the unit as thin as possible, the Adamo is fitted with a protruding strip that forms the back of the unit. On first glance, the strip looks like an extended battery but is actually where most of the ports reside. These ports include a Display-Port, three USB ports (one of which is an eSATA combo), and an Ethernet port. As with the Air and  the Voodoo 133, an internal optical drive was completely out of the question, although Dell is offering an external DVD burner or blu-ray reader option. Standard wireless features include 802.11n and Blue-tooth. It also has integrated mobile broadband (cellular modem), which is something both the Air and the 133 lack. The absence of a built-in media card reader was the most glaring omission. As for road-ready features, the ThinkPad X301 and sony Z590 have the most, with their wide array of wireless technologies , integrated optical drives, and , yes , media card readers.Since the Adamo is Dell’s premium brand, a 128GB SSD is the only storage option available and a big reason why the price seems so high. The benefits of an SSD include durability, energy efficiency, and, most important in the Adamo’s case, the substantial boost in transfer speeds.