I’ve just read The Inquirer’s take on Dell’s new Adamo. There’s nothing particularly new in the text of the article but they have got a few good hands-on photos of the “pearl” model, which does look a lot whiter than in Dell’s PR shots. If these pics are truly representative then, with that two-tone lid and ring-patterned base, the Adamo is even less attractive than i originally thought. Such a shame.
It’s an almost perfect recipe for geek glee. A group of lads going by the name of ArcAttack! use Tesla coils to create music, including a cover of the Imperial March:
Last week i mentioned how we were still waiting for Google Maps’ Street View in the UK. Well, we’re not waiting anymore. Street View is now live and The Register readers have already spotted some fine examples of Great British life captured by the Google Spycars…
Restoring a computer from a saved image of the hard drive is pure magic. Technical wizardry. Geek sorcery. There are plenty of commercial programs for doing this but i’d always struggled to find decent free tool… until now. PING is the first free partition imaging program i’ve tried that is simple to follow and straight-forward to use. That’s not to say it’s novice-friendly but anyone that understands “partitions” should be able to create a backup of their system in no time1.
Obviously some time is required, smartarse. Testing PING i imaged a 40GB disk in under 30 minutes and the restoration took around 10. ↩
So, Dell have officially announced their ultra-slim-line laptop, the “adamo” and duly proclaimed it the “pinnacle of craftmanship”. Most other folk are just going for “MacBook Air-alike”.
And it’s not hard to see why. It’s a contender for thinnest laptop in the world, has a solid aluminium chassis, a backlit keyboard, 13-inch “edge-to-edge” glass screen, no optical drive, a reasonably underwhelming tech spec, some nice packaging and all the model/serial numbers and FCC legal jargon specially etched into the underside. It’s also rather expensive, with a starting price of £1650.
It’s a good effort and certainly one of the best-looking Dell notebooks i’ve ever seen (not difficult really) but it’s let down in too many places. I like the uniform-depth, brushed-metal body with it’s rounded corners but that odd ledge behind the screen hinges ruins the design. With that ugly, strange hump i think the only angle that the machine as a whole looks any good is side-on with the lid closed. Likewise, the “pearl” (silver) case looks much nicer than the “onyx” (black) version but is spoilt by that horrendous ring-work pattern on the lid. It also has a very stupid name. I do, however, love the curved keys – though it’d be interesting to see how they feel in use.
Perhaps the most notable thing about the adamo though is that the hideous hump (or part of it) is magnetic and thus detachable. Sadly there’s nothing special behind it. Nope, the sole purpose of this little party piece is apparently just to hide the Microsoft Windows Certificate of Authenticity label. Tremendous.
If you want to know more about adamo, CNet has the first “Hands-on” Review…