Dell Adamo vs. MacBook Air

Performance

Here’s where the rubber really meets the road. Both notebooks use Intel Core 2 Duo processors, but the Air comes in 1.6GHz and 1.86GHz variants, and the chips in the Adamo have been clocked back to 1.2GHz and 1.4GHz. The Air also has a faster 1066MHz front size bus speed and uses correspondingly faster RAM, but it can only be equipped with up to 2GB of it, while the Adamo can handle 4GB. Finally, the Adamo also falls down on graphics, where it uses Intel’s integrated GS45 chip rather than the Nvidia 9400M found in the Air. Before we hand this one to the Air on almost every front, though, be aware that the faster processors clock themselves down quite frequently to avoid overheating, so the gap in real-life use may not be as wide as illustrated by specs.

Winner: Apple MacBook Air

Left: MacBook Air; Right: Dell Adamo