Technologizer » Dell

Dell’s Adamo XPS: Incredibly Thin! Unexpectedly Odd!

Harry McCracken — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:56:53 +0000

Okay, now we know why Dell was being so secretive about its new Adamo XPS laptop: It’s not only remarkably thin (9.99mm) but also uses a design which is unique, as far as I know. The keyboard hinges to the display not at its edge but part way up,so the keyboard is angled upwards. As seen in the photo above, the ports are on the display half of the system rather than the keyboard part. And you swipe your finger across some sort of band to open the case. Very, very unusual.

Most attempts to “improve” laptop design have flopped, but the Adamo is intriguing, at least. It’s kind of hard to figure it out without seeing it in person–which I haven’t done–but reports from those who have are at least guardedly positive, and say the angled keyboard makes for comfy typing.
Props to Dell for trying something different, at least. It has a preview site up with basic specs for the new Adamo; it’ll cost $1799 and be out for the holiday season.

Any guesses as to whether the slanty keyboard will be successful? Can you envision other PC manufacturers plagiarizing the idea, or is this the 2009 equivalent of an IBM butterfly Thinkpad?

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5Words: Dell Continues Adamo Tease

Harry McCracken — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 16:52:39 +0000

Dell, enough Adamo teasing already.

Disney Stores mimic Apple Stores.

Apple: Snow Leopard loses data.

How should iPhones handle multitasking?

Blockbuster lands on TiVo boxes.

Tim Berners-Lee: // superfluous.

iPhone: it’s a car key!

Plastic Logic: no color e-reader.

Nokia’s Booklet: $299 with subsidy.

Best Buy sells PCs aplenty.

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New Dell Adamo: How Thin Can You Go?

Harry McCracken — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 21:39:06 +0000

Dell has a teaser site up for the Adamo XPS, a new laptop in its luxury Adamo line. It has nothing to say about the system except that it’s 9.99mm thick–presumably at its thinnest point. That’s compared to the original Adamo’s thickness of 16.5mm, and the MacBook Air’s 4mm-19.4mm. (Unlike Apple, Dell quotes only one figure even though the case looks similarly tapered.)

It makes no sense to have an opinion on the new Adamo until we know something about its specs and its price, but I’m glad to see Dell make some machines in which serious engineering, not specs-for-the-price-point, is the guiding principle. With Microsoft’s Windows ads entirely focused on promoting Windows econoboxes, it’s easy to forget that the slickest Windows laptops give Macs a run for their money (at–mysteriously enough–similar price points).

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Dell Ditches Its Big Netbook

Harry McCracken — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 06:23:22 +0000

I swear I’m not a conspiracy theorist. But if I were, I’d be suspicious about the circumstances surrounding the death of Dell’s Mini 12 netbook, which the company is discontinuing. Along with Lenovo’s IdeaPad S12, it was one of the few netbooks on the market with a 12-inch screen, so its absence will be felt.

The company says that “Larger notebooks require a little more horsepower to be really useful,” but like Mike Arrington, I’m left flummoxed by that–there’s no reason why some folks might not be happy with a low-cost, basic-specs laptop that happened to have a larger screen than most netbooks. And there’s no technical reason not to build one, which is presumably why Dell built the Mini 12 in the first place.

The system packed an Intel CPU and ran Windows XP (or Ubuntu), but both Intel and Microsoft have decidedly conflicted feelings about netbooks–especially ones with 12-inch screens. And now Dell’s lost interest in large-screen netbooks, too. Perhaps the Mini 12 just didn’t sell particularly well–although Dell didn’t say it wasn’t popular, just that it was a bad idea. That’s sort of the party line of the whole industry.

In the end, there are really no such thing as netbooks–there are just notebooks in various sizes with different specs at different price points. Maybe Dell will be able to configure a 12-inch notebook with better specs than the Mini 12 and bring it in at a price point close to the Mini (which started at $429). If not, it’s telling consumers who want a fairly roomy screen but who don’t need a lot of processing power that they can’t get both in one machine. Anymore.

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WSJ: Dell is Developing an Android Handheld

Harry McCracken — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 22:15:19 +0000

Rumors about a Dell handheld device of some sort have been circulating for ages, but the Wall Street Journal is reporting what seems to be more than mere rumor. It says that Dell is working on a handheld that will sport an ARM processor and run Google’s Android OS. It may come out in the second half this year, the Journal says. Or be delayed. Or never come out.

The Dell gadget would apparently be a rival for Apple’s extremely successful iPod Touch–a device that’s been around for two years and which still doesn’t have much in the way of direct competition, though it’ll get some later this year when Microsoft’s Zune HD appears. The Journal’s story points out that a Dell Android handheld would be an example of the Mobile Internet Device form factor championed by Intel–even if it runs a non-Intel CPU–but the most striking thing about MIDs so far is that that nobody who claims to make one has built anything that consumers want to buy in significant numbers. Apple made the Touch into a hit in part by blithely sidestepping all the mistakes the rest of the industry was making, such as trying to shoehorn full-strength operating systems onto tiny devices and giving them lame physical keyboards.

At this point in any story on Dell’s handheld plans, it’s mandatory to mention that it tried making MP3 players before and failed. But basing a new device on Android would be smart (it relieves Dell of most of the challenges of being a software company). And Dell picked up some interesting intellectual property and smart people when it acquired a mobile software/service company called Zing in 2007. Bottom line: Dell isn’t any more of an unlikely candidate to take in the iPod Touch than anyone else who seems to be planning to do so.

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5Words for Thursday, June 11th, 2009

Harry McCracken — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:41:59 +0000

Dell’s the First With A Sub-$300 10-Inch Netbook

Jared Newman — Mon, 11 May 2009 23:08:39 +0000

Dell doesn’t make the cheapest of netbooks, so I never guessed it would first to make a 10-inch model for under $300, but the proof is in the company’s May 2009 PDF catalog, hawking the Mini 10v for $299.

Apparently the news was leaked earlier than Dell anticipated, but it’s real. One user in Denmark has already pre-ordered the new model. The 10v uses an Intel Atom N70 processor, standard for netbooks, instead of the Z520 and Z530 processors used in the original Mini 10. As a result, it’s $100 cheaper.

You can find smaller netbooks, such as Dell’s Mini 9 and Asus’ 8.9-inch Eee PC, for under $300, but from what I can tell by looking at all the major netbook makers, Dell is the first to offer a 10-inch screen at this price. ZDNet, which sees the move as the beginning of a trend, believes cheaper, full-fledged ultrathin laptops from HP, Acer and MSI are the motivation.

I’ve got my own theory: Netbooks were an underdog to begin with, selling at rock-bottom prices because of their small screens and meager specs. It follows that most of their expansion has been upwards towards standard laptops, with bigger screens, better batteries and more powerful processors. Dell’s development moves in the opposite direction, using decidedly average technology to create a netbook that’s dirt-cheap, but far from cutting-edge.

In a sense, Dell’s mimicking the typical PC growth cycle. As new models hit the market, the old technology sticks around in cheaper models. It’s just fascinating with netbooks because the prices are so low to begin with.

This is a trend that I’d like to continue. Having more options at the high-end is great, but netbooks’ real appeal remains in ever more capable PCs at the floor of the price spectrum.

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Android Notebooks From Dell?

Harry McCracken — Wed, 06 May 2009 23:19:49 +0000

Engadget is reporting that mobile software company Bsquare issued a press release saying it was providing software for Dell netbooks running Google’s Android OS. It’s hard to see how a company could do so unless it was, indeed, working with Dell on such products. But Dell hasn’t said anything about Android, and I’m not seeing the press release Engadget republished on Bsquare’s site.

One way or another, it’ll be fascinating to see if Android (or other contenders, like Palm’s WebOS) does end up on netbooks, and if so, whether it finds success. It isn’t every day that a new consumer client OS arrives and finds success–in 2009 as in 1984, the major players are Microsoft and Apple, and other players are tiny potatoes when it comes to market share (sorry, Linux, I love you just the same). But with more and more of everyday computing happening in the browser, it’s never been more plausible that a new OS might make sense and gain traction. Although it’s still not entirely clear to me why Android would be a more compelling netbook OS than something like Ubuntu already is…

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