Exclusive hands on with the Dell Adamo

It's been a big news day for Dell, with big announcements: the new Wasabi zink printer, a new Dell Mini with a 10" screen, GPS, TV tuner and edge-to-edge keyboard and screen, and the new luxury notebook line: Adamo.  I persuaded Dell to let me snap a few pics of the Adamo (working, of course) and I have one thing to say: Macbook Air, watch out.

Adamo.  Latin for "to fall in love with, to find pleasure with."  Originally this was a code name, but Dell thought it was so fitting that they'll be using it for the final product -- and it's certainly easy to fall in love with the Adamo.

While we weren't given much in the way of hard specs for the Adamo (and what little we were given is under a non-disclosure agreement), I can say that Dell's new luxury portable is so far ahead of where they've been, it's almost hard to believe that it's Dell that has designed it. 

The 13" Adamo I handled is super thin.  It looks a little like the Voodoo Envy, with the very square lines and design.  Despite being so thin, it feels very solidly built; it'd hurt to be smacked by one of these things.  Dell has gone for a very minimal look with the Adamo line; the white version has a two-tone lid: half glossy plastic, half what I presume is brushed aluminum.  All in all, it's a very sexy machine.

As a result of the very minimal nature of the Adamo, some of the ports were very minimal, too.  The right side of the machine has what I believe is the power button and a headphone/line out jack.  The back of the machine has AC in, two USB ports, an e-SATA/USB combo port, a DisplayPort outlet and an Ethernet jack (presumably Gigabit).

Heat vents are only featured along the rear of the notebook.  The vent holes feature into the overall square design, with completely square holes.  I was told that this was a point of contention with the product's designer; round holes can be drilled, but square holes must be laser cut, which adds additional cost.  Fortunately for us, however, the design aesthetic won out. 

Again, I can assure you that while some doubt has been cast as to whether the Adamo models were even bootable, I can attest they were working just fine and the pictures of this site up on the Adamo screen should convince those with doubts.  We weren't told what the resolution was (or allowed to look), but the screen is nice and everything was very sharp.  As the second picture shows, there's also certainly more than one Adamo floating around at CES.

The Adamo's power adapter is also very svelte.  Again, more metal and glossy white plastic are found here, with the whole thing not weighing more than a couple of ounces. 

Dell's new Adamo is one heck of a notebook.  We're finally starting to see really amazing computer designs from several different manufacturers, and Dell's is right up with the best of them.  No word on price was even mentioned, but I'm betting it isn't going to be cheap -- there's a lot of cool technology packed into there.  And while we don't have much yet in the way of specs, I can promise you that there's more to this than what you've seen so far, and it looks like Dell is going to emerge as a very strong player in the high-end notebook market.  Be sure to stay tuned to NotebookReview; we'll get a proper review up as soon as we can beg Dell to let us get some time in with it.

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