The race to kill the MacBook Air is on

By Christian Zibreg

Chicago (IL) - Although MacBook Air remains the world's thinnest and lightest notebook in the ultra-portable category and has largely remained unchallenged by the rest of the industry, this could change within weeks as Dell preps a challenger. Dell shifted its teasing campaign into a higher gear ahead of the launch of this highly anticipated MacBook Air-killer, dubbed Adamo Thirteen.


Little is known of real specs of the machine, but Dell insists it will be "world's thinnest laptop" that will beat the MacBook Air on features and price. Apple is also feeling pressure from the high-end of the netbook market where the company chose not to compete, but where companies like Sony are bringing feature-packed machines for a fraction of MacBook Air's price.

The word about Dell's Adamo Thirteen spread quickly when the computer maker first pitched the notebook to the public just before this past Christmas. Although the company remains tight lipped about exact specs, the description on its own site (that was later removed) revealed Adamo will sport a 13-inch display and the same DisplayPort interconnect as new MacBook notebooks, although not its mini variant that Apple's notebooks employ and were recently made part of the official standard. Adamo should also come with Blu-Ray, a feature conspicuously absent from Apple's product line.

The newly updated teaser page offers no new information about Adamo Thirteen with regards to specs, price points or even a shipping date. Instead, its sole purpose appears to be building the suspense by asking users to "prepare to fall in love" with Adamo. The site also invites users to sign-up via email and stay "in the loop" as the love story unfolds. At the time of this writing, no email communication has been sent out to users who signed up for Adamo mailing list.

According to Dell's vice president of global consumer sales and marketing, Michael Tatelman, the word Adamo means "to fall in love with." However, many science fiction fans may be unable to disassociate the name with that of a well-known battlestar commander.

Despite the fact that ultra-thin and ultra-light notebook category appeals to a minor portion of an overall notebook market, many companies are gearing up to crack MacBook Air's dominance due to high premium attached to ultra-thin notebooks and meaty margins.


Killing the MacBook Air on thinness and price

Described by Dell as "the world's thinnest laptop," the company is clearly aimed to take that title from the MacBook Air. Apple's ultra-thin notebook measures only 0.76" in thickness and weighs about 3.0 lbs. According to DigiTimes, Dell put out the order for ultra-thin (0.14") panels from Samsung, suggesting that the Windows PC maker could beat Apple's MacBook Air in the ultra-portable notebook category. Although Adamo has yet to materialize, a brief notebook appearance at the CES last month created quite a stir when a model teased the press by briefly carrying around what appeared to be ultra-thin and ultra-light notebook with premium finish. Unlike anything you've seen from Dell, Adamo certainly sports a striking design that turns heads and should be priced to give MacBook Air a serious run for its money.

Some vendors are leveraging their popular netbook categories to fight the MacBook Air on price alone. This is especially the case in an emerging category of so-called premium netbooks that make the distinction between stripped-down sub-10" cheap notebook and ultra-portable notebook somewhat blurred. Add to this the fact that the latest generation of netbooks pack capable processors and GPUs and your premium netbook could easily fit into ultra-portable notebook category. Still, price, processing and graphics power remain key differentiation points that separate the two.

A prime example is Sony's latest VGN-P530H/Q that offers an interesting take on the netbook category. Besides the choice of several colors, Sony's machine measures just 9.5" x 4.5" and weighing only 1.5 lbs - exactly twice as light as the MacBook Air. Its ultra-wide form factor is dictated by the choice of 8-inch LED-backlit 1600x768 display. The machine runs 1.33 GHz Atom processor, comes with 2GB RAM, up to four hours battery and up to 60GB hard drive (128GB SDD as an option), and packs integrated GPS and mobile broadband, the two features that the MacBook Air lacks, all for $899. Dell is competing in this blurry netbook-notebook area with its 9- and 12-inch Inspiron Mini.


Conclusion

Although both Dell and Sony offer (or will offer) notebooks that are lighter and thinner than the MacBook Air and pack more features at either comparable or lower price points, Sony's new P-series is really competing in the netbook category -- which is evident by its choice of Intel Atom processor as opposed to special-run Intel Core 2 Duo chip that runs inside MacBook Air. This leaves Dell's Adamo Thirteen as the only serious contender to the title of world's thinnest notebook and biggest threat to the MacBook Air.

Although you may dismiss Dell on the ground of the dull nature of its commodity Windows machines, Adamo does not carry the same DNA as the Dell notebooks you may know. Instead, the Adamo brand name will be slapped to an entire line of premium products aimed to represent the best of craftsmanship and the design that Dell has to offer -- as confirmed by Dell's vice president of global consumer sales and marketing Michael Tatelman.

Scheduled to ship some time before the end of March, Adamo Thirteen may pose the biggest design and engineering challenge that Apple has had in a long time from any rival. It will give MacBook Air a serious run for its money, that is if Apple already doesn't have the next MacBook Air waiting as a response.

In any case, Dell is betting that Adamo's supposed aggressive price point could become a rock solid argument for people who had been eyeing MacBook Air but have been unable to afford it. Even if Dell ends up holding bragging rights to "the world's thinnest laptop" claim for only a very brief period of time, Adamo will still have paved the way for other design-conscious premium products that will breathe fresh air into a computer manufacturer often unfairly labeled as "dull."

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