***-->The Official Dell Adamo Thread<--***

[exi]

All,

Would you advise trying out an Adamo as a notebook, ordered from the Outlet, to use in place of a MacBook Pro?

I'm on a 15" MBP right now -- a 2.53 GHz C2D one -- and I'm just not the world's biggest OS X fan. Was thinking about going with the Adamo, although I'm aware that the battery life and performance will be less.

Also -- where in the world are these low-$1000 prices coming from? I'd very much appreciate a PM or anything on that; I've hunted around on several coupon sites, and I'm only finding one or two expired coupons that could be used on the Adamo.

[kitir]

All,

Would you advise trying out an Adamo as a notebook, ordered from the Outlet, to use in place of a MacBook Pro?
.... I'm aware that the battery life and performance will be less.

Hi,

Be sure, battery life and performance will be less. But this is normal with such components inside. Adamo wasn't engineered as road warrior and primary work machine. It is rather supporting laptop for light work or special occasions as important business meetings. And this way I'm using it - as support it is best I could have.
I'm changing from E4300 2,4Ghz and 5h of battery work to Adamo. 1,2GHz and 3-3,5h of light-to-mid work (this is normal time for my example, but ofc it depends. I can run 4h but with "minimal" settings which I don't like really). Processor is enough fast for office and simple works, but you couldn't expect it will be a speed daemon. I'm working with AutoCAD 2008 quite normally, MS Office (Excel and big Word files) and I never find a slowdowns. Only one thing is making me crazy - charging time is an absurd. After 3h of work you have to charge it 4h ! It should be around half of working time.

cheers

K.

[Vogelbung]

http://www.laptopbatteryexpress.com/...p/am-pp66s.htm

I'm thinking about ordering one of these. It should work with the Adamo. I have a small bunch of very similar units for the Air (60wh Hypermac) and the runtime is about 8.5 hours on super power ekeing (Air itself goes for 3.5 hours in real-life use). You should therefore be able to get 9+ hours on the Adamo using the 66wh cell above in similar ekeing use.

Unfortunately you'll now be carrying an all-up weight of 5.5lbs, but... well, it's your call.

Oh yeah - all Onyx users. How bad is the fingerprint magnet / dust issue in real terms over a decent period of ownership? Warts and all opinions please.

I'm having real second thoughts about the Pearl: As nice as it is, the Onyx calls out to me every time I go visit the Dell site.

[kitir]

I'm thinking about ordering one of these...

Me too. I have very positive experience with slice battery in XT and XT2 Latitudes - so naturally I thought about some additional battery.
I have to be sure this battery will use connector for Adamo (it is different than in Latitues).

How bad is the fingerprint magnet / dust issue in real terms over a decent period of ownership?

Onyx is dust magnet indeed, especialy with all-metal "electrostatic" case. But it is not so strong, and I'm using special anti-dust (anti-electrostatic) clothes and it helps much.
Fingerprints - highly polished screen and top cover are catching them. I have to wipe those surfaces once per two days to keep clean look - but it is not so bad after Latitude E4300 experience. Rest of Adamo case, brushed metal, touchpad and keyboard are rather fingerprint resistive and this is great. With E4300 I had to clean constantly all black plastic surfaces - backlit keyboard horrible catched my fingerprints, the same was with touchpad buttons. Adamo is free of that, and I'm really happy.
I used Pearl for some time (I'm planning it for my girl) and in fact those dust and finger marks are less visible. But I can't imagine to use light aluminium Adamo on the meeting. I love black

cheers

M.

[Mad*Max]

I adore the design , maybe ill buy it
Will i be able to play smoothly 1080p, Photoshop smooth work with the integrated graphics?
i couldnt do it with 128mb dv6000 graphics...

[Mad*Max]

Could someone of the owners describe the performance compared to a t9400 for exaple, just to give me an idea
Also 3G, it means that you can put a Sim card in ANY country and have internet?

+ do i get W7 free upgrade if i purchase from outlet?

Thanks

[Tuwa]

Hi,

1,2GHz and 3-3,5h of light-to-mid work (this is normal time for my example, but ofc it depends. I can run 4h but with "minimal" settings which I don't like really). Processor is enough fast for office and simple works, but you couldn't expect it will be a speed daemon. I'm working with AutoCAD 2008 quite normally, MS Office (Excel and big Word files) and I never find a slowdowns. Only one thing is making me crazy - charging time is an absurd. After 3h of work you have to charge it 4h ! It should be around half of working time.

I have no problems getting around 5 hours when using mine, and that's 1.4GHz, but i guess it depends on your regular work. After 6 episodes of Family Guy i was watching on the airplane (each episode has roughly 22 minutes, regular DVD-Rip, non-HD) i had 55% of battery left, and movies are quite demanding as far as i know. Also when i was writing my dissertation, running just MS Word 2007 and 3 opened .pdf's in the background i got to around 5:20 or so before getting critical battery warning at 5%. I'm running Dell's default power profile, keyboard is lit to max brightness, LCD brightness is set to 1 (one notch from off), anything higher is way too bright for me. I'm not sure if there are different batteries in 1.2 and 1.4GHz versions or if 1.2GHz gets lower battery time due to lower speed and CPU has to be stressed more, thus increasing the overall energy consumption, but 5 hours is definitely possible with regular office work. Getting such mileage on regular basis.

Oh yeah - all Onyx users. How bad is the fingerprint magnet / dust issue in real terms over a decent period of ownership? Warts and all opinions please.

I'm having real second thoughts about the Pearl: As nice as it is, the Onyx calls out to me every time I go visit the Dell site.

Onyx is more sleek and business-like imho. Pearl is too much "fashionable" for my taste with all the decorative etching, kinda like Apple From my experience, dust isn't really an issue, it gets wiped away with regular use when typing and such. And i keep my Adamo in sleeve when not using it, so no dust collecting when it's idle. As for fingerprints, it's bearable. I was quite horrified when i got it first, there were fingerprints everywhere after having it in hands for 5 minutes, but once you learn how and where to touch it (oooh sexual innuendo) you will reduce them to minimum. I started to put my Adamo into sleeve with the glossy LCD lid inside, pushing it inside by holding the matte backside. That way, when i want to take it out of sleeve, i can grab it by the matte side and not glossy, thus eliminating any fingerprints. Same goes for when you are carrying it around without sleeve, just hold it at the back side, problem solved. You will leave some fingerprints when you want to open the display lid, but if you are careful and open it by the sides, only edges of your fingers will touch the glossy finish so fingerprints will be very small and unnoticeable. Also, whenever i give it to my girlfriend, she can open it without ANY fingerprints at all, so perhaps men are messy by nature, who knows. Bottomline, even though Onyx attracts all kinds of dirt, if you are careful and pay attention where you hold your hand, you can eliminate most of it. It all comes down to deciding, whether you have patience and can be bothered with being careful, or if you are the type that just grabs stuff hastily without having time to pay attention.

I adore the design , maybe ill buy it
Will i be able to play smoothly 1080p, Photoshop smooth work with the integrated graphics?
i couldnt do it with 128mb dv6000 graphics...

1080p plays fine on 1.4GHz version, no clue about lower model, someone else might answer that. No clue about photoshop, never used it, but i recall a friend of mine who was using photoshop on ancient Pentium III 800MHz with some ancient graphic card and it worked, just like everything else worked 10 years ago. But i have no clue what 'smooth performance' means in photoshop terms so yeah... better ask someone who is skilled with that software, he should know what kind of performance you can expect from Adamo hardware. You might even want to ask in other forum sections, there are several laptops with same specs as Adamo, for example Lenovo X301.

Also 3G, it means that you can put a Sim card in ANY country and have internet?

I believe it works that way. I have tried SIM cards of 3 different European carriers so far (UK, Austria, Slovakia) and no issues whatsoever. You should still ask your mobile operator if they use any special hardware/frequency/whatever though, just to be sure. I'm sure they even have some test SIM car in the store which you can perhaps try, before committing to the contract. Also mind that the SIM slot tray is a tad fragile and i would definitely not recommend using it often. Not that i damaged it or anything, but it feels a bit flimsy, and there's even warning in user manual to take extra care when handling it.

[Mad*Max]

Thanks
the 3G function is truly great

I also have a i7 desktop now, im typing on it, and im selling it
Instead i wanted to get this work of art, because of its design
I saw on some charts that it takes 2 times longer than T9400, you can imagine compared to a i7
So if its a few seconds more from 10 minutes, its unbelievable
Tuwa are you sure?, id've thought 20 minutes

about photoshop, im really in need of some info on performance

[Tuwa]

I also have a i7 desktop now, im typing on it, and im selling it
Instead i wanted to get this work of art, because of its design
I saw on some charts that it takes 2 times longer than T9400, you can imagine compared to a i7
So if its a few seconds more from 10 minutes, its unbelievable
Tuwa are you sure?, id've thought 20 minutes

about photoshop, im really in need of some info on performance

I think we had a slight misunderstanding in PM, i sent you another to clarify Also i have a feeling from your post that you want to buy a laptop that will be your primary computer after selling your desktop, and in that case i would NOT recommend Adamo. It's a great little machine but it suffers from same illness as Macbook Air, Lenovo X301 and others - it's not meant to be a primary computer. You will miss power for heavy tasks. It's a portable (almost ultraportable) machine, not a work-horse. If you want laptop for everything, get some 15.4"-17" with proper C2D or C2Q and dedicated graphic card.

[Mad*Max]

Yes i considered m6400 before this
But i wont use its full potential

Im obsessed with build quality and the adamo has it

As i said Basic+Watch HD + little Music+video encode + little photoshop
im confident it will be good enough

So the Fan Noise wont be a problem?
+
REALLY is the charge time 4 HOURS ?
it should be fixed by bios?