Digital Home Thoughts: Dell Unveils Full Details for Adamo Laptop

Today Dell officially unveiled their Adamo notebook, and it looks like an impressive piece of hardware - definitely not your typical Dell product. Some of the highlights I gleaned from browsing the micro-site: the keyboard is backlit and has "scalloped" keys, which I think is a fancy way of saying they slope inward. The laptop is only 16.4 mm thin, has three USB ports on the back (along with an Ethernet port), and boasts a 16:9 aspect ratio, 13.4 inch 1280 x 720 display with "edge to edge" glass - the bezel looks incredibly thin. Dell claims 4 hours 53 minutes of battery life from a single charge, and under the hood it has either a 1.4 Ghz or 1.2 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, either 4 GB or 2 GB DDR3 RAM, Wireless N, and Bluetooth 2.1. There are two colours, "Onyx" (black) and "Pearl" (white), and two basic configurations for each: "Admire" (1.2 GHZ CPU, 2 GB RAM, $1999 USD) and "Desire" (1.4 Ghz CPU, 4 GB RAM, $2699 USD). Each comes with a 128 GB solid state drive for storage. Dell has an assortment of accessories for the Adamo line, including an external optical drive (that's right folks, no optical drive in this thing!), and a Tumi leather sleeve. The external optical drive comes in two flavours: a slot-loading DVD-RW drive for $120 or a slot-loading Blu-ray drive for a pricey $350.

So I guess the question is, in the worst economic environment in nearly a century, Dell releases a luxery laptop - who's going to buy it? People are flocking to low-cost netbooks because they offer great value for the dollar. I think Dell's Adamo has a rough road ahead of it. Anyone got their credit card ready?