Dell Adamo vs. MacBook Air

May 13, 2009 By Nick Mokey

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

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Dell drops Adamo 13 to $899 at 9:16am 27th December 2010 [...] Although Dell’s super-slim Adamo line has been out for the better part of two years—it competed with Apple’s original MacBook Air—the new configuration could be worth serious consideration for folks looking for most of the [...]
Ian Bell at 9:52pm 30th September 2009 I would take the MacBook air in a heartbeat. Still thinner IMO and has more of a wow factor. Plus it doesn't run XP like the Dell :P
1. Bernardo_O'reilly at 11:23pm 13th October 2010 adamo runs win 7 not XP, im typing this message on an adamo and so far i'm kind of impressed by it. Its a nice secondary laptop for people w/ more than one computer (since both adamo and air are kind of underpowered). Although the Mac air looks nice, i decided to buy this sucker because i dont want to look like a pretentious hipster when im studying @ school. Besides, I need this to run windows for pirating stuff and testing out software. Also the black adamo looks less feminine