Dell discontinues ultraportable Adamo laptops

By Adam Rosenberg February 9, 2011

Pour one out for our fallen warrior. Dell’s Adamo fought the best it could against Apple’s MacBook Air and other ultraportable laptops on the market, but the battle is now lost. Those browsing their way over to the computer manufacturer’s Adamo product page are greeted with the following message, in red text: “This item may not be available in the business segment you’ve selected. Please contact your sales representative for more details.” A report from CNET further reveals that the ultraportable has indeed been officially discontinued.

The Adamo was introduced at the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Only .65 inches thick and sporting an aluminum casing, the laptop seemed well-prepared to take on Apple’s MacBook Air, especially with its use of solid-state hard drives and its 13.4-inch, 16:9 aspect ratio high-definition display. The laptop also featured a SIM card slot and offered the option of shipping with a built-in 3G card.

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For all of its virtues, the Adamo was done in by a steep price that didn’t line up with the hardware powering it. Like the early MacBook Air, it was priced at around $2,000 when it was released. There’s simply not enough computer inside the Adamo to justify that kind of cost. The counter-argument is that there’s a premium to be paid for the “ultra” in “ultraportable,” but it was too hefty in the Adamo’s case to attract enough of a following.

Dell ran a major holiday sale on the now-discontinued laptops, and another shortly after the holidays. And now the Adamo is out of production. This battle may be lost for Dell, but with the rising popularity and power of tablet devices, you can rest assured that the war isn’t even close to being over.

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