Apr
10
2009
UPDATE 4-29-09 Dell’s Adamo Is Cold Black Steel – 85% Still Say "So What!"
Update 4-29-09: iFixit and TechRepublic Look Under the Skin of the Adamo
adamo on the inside
The updated verdict from the 1,000+ readers of the TechRepulic. Can Dell reposition themselves as a "luxury" brand and sell a notebook at the same price point as Apple? 85% say NO. [I’m looking forward to seeing what Dell has to say about the sales of their new benchmark for black steel!]
+++
Well having put my hands on one of these little black beasts at SXSW (Richard Binhammer was toting one around) I have to say they are pretty. But… So what.
The point is Dell has got to do something. They will die a painful death if they lose money on every netbook sold. Actually everyone in the industry is losing money on the netbooks. And I wasn’t impressed by any of the one’s I saw. I will say Patrick Morehead of AMD had an HP real-notebook that was small enough to be a net book but with a real processor, a real hard drive and 4 gigs of ram. I don’t remember what it was called. They are releasing them this week or next week. But back to the Adama.
So a $2,000 notebook? Well, it ain’t about the recession, it’s about margin. And here’s an interesting observation, I have been waiting over 6 weeks for my $2,700 17" MacBook Pro. And I’ve got two more weeks to wait, according to Apple’s online order status update. And don’t talk to me about what a bad idea it was for apple to make the battery un-swappable. Yeah, tell that to the folks who introduced the iPod and the iPhone. WHY THEN am I paying for and waiting for one of the most expensive laptops on the market?
Why is the 17" back ordered? Cause it’s sold out. Why would I order a new machine when I have a 15.4" Intel Duo Powered MacBook Pro in my hands right now.
Gaming perhaps? Nope.
Prestige at carrying one of the coolest laptops on the planet? Nah.
Power? Close.
Environmental concerns? Not exactly.
Answer: 1920×1200 screen resolution. Plain and simple. Oh, and it runs the Mac OS X which is far superior to anything else out there. Yes, I run Ubuntu as well. [Hold on a sec while I boot up XP in VMWare’s Fusion. Okay, I’m back faster than my Dell would come out of hibernation.]
So Adamo, I say, so what. Nice black polished steel. It’s cold blooded and it’s a product that I don’t think will be a "MacBook Pro killer" any more than Dell’s "new phone" will be an "iPhone killer" or their new old never-launched MP3 player will be an "ipod killer."
And when the GREEN questions come out about the Adamo I bet we’re gonna discover Dell’s little fit about Apple’s green image is little more than nuclear generated steam.
@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/review-adamo
Note: Andiamo! def: (interjection) Italian. :let’s go; hurry up. That’s what I have to say to Apple about my MBP. Andiamo!
