Dell ditches Adamo laptop

Dell, one of the world’s leading PC vendors, discontinued its Adamo laptop after it failed to keep up with Apple’s ultrathin Macbook Air. The laptop range, Adamo, a Latin word meaning "to fall in love with”, was launched at CES in 2009. At the launch of Adamo, Dell had said, “Style-minded people who place a premium on precision craftsmanship and design can now add Adamo to their list of must-have items for 2009.”

But, Adamo, which was launched as a challenger to the Macbook Air, could not attract customers due to it heavy price tag of $2,000. Poor sales forced the company to drop the price of the laptop from $2,000 to merely $799.

The ultraslim Adamo laptop was rolled out with some very striking features, including an aluminium case, a 13.4-inch, 16:9 HD display, a SIM card slot, a built-in 3G card, an ultra low voltage Intel processor and solid state drive.

Dell’s recently launched its new 7-inch Android tablet, called the Streak 7. The Dell Streak 7 features dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 processor, a WVGA touchscreen and Gorilla glass. The company is also expected to launch a new laptop within the coming six months.

The Dell Adamo, introduced in 2009 was positioned as a Windows alternative to Apple's ultrathin laptop, will be discontinued once Dell sells its remaining inventory. The Adamo is already gone from Dell's website (except for refurbished models), but other retailers such as Amazon are still selling the laptop.

Meanwhile, Apple has refreshed its own MacBook Air line with a much thinner design thanks to specially designed solid state drives, tapering up to 0.68 inches thick. The new Airs are also cheaper, starting at $999 for an 11-inch model.

The door is open for a new wave of MacBook Air rivals with Toshiba's slim solid state drives -- reportedly the same kind that Apple uses -- and at least one PC vendor is already committed to battling the MacBook Air for ultrathin supremacy. At CES, Samsung showed off the 9 Series, a 13.3-inch laptop measuring 0.64 inches thick with a 128 GB solid state drive, 6.5 hours of battery life and Intel's new Sandy Bridge CPU platform. The 9 Series will be available in the spring for $1,599.

Faced with these developments, Dell can either overhaul its own Adamo line or back out of the ultrathin computing game altogether. According to CNet, Dell will introduce an entirely new ultrathin design within six months, but the products will simply be integrated into Dell's existing consumer laptop lines such as XPS and Inspiron. The meaning of "Adamo" was always a mystery anyway.