Dell Unveils Incredibly Thin Adamo XPS Laptop

Remember when the MacBook Air was released? We all thought, “Wow, I guess you couldn’t possibly get any thinner than that.” Well, we were wrong, way wrong. Today Dell unveiled the Adamo XPS at a special event, and this thing reinvents the term “ultrathin laptop.” Just check out that image above; it’s almost invisible from the side!

Before you start geeking out, there’s a problem. Dell didn’t give any information on this thin wonder. That means we have no idea what the exact thickness is, but c’mon, doesn’t it make the MacBook Air look like a cheeseburger addict (or rather icanhascheezeburger, since it feasts on the ‘webs). Not only did Dell neglect to tell us exactly how thin it is, they didn’t say much more than, “Well, here it is. And now on to more boring topics.” (Paraphrasing, of course)

Fortunately, this sudden announcement reminded us of a teaser image we saw last month. That image teases the Adamo XPS as being only 9.99mm thick. Less than a centimeter! And the images from the presser certainly seem to corroborate that figure. The original Adamo was exceptionally thin, but the XPS is a sliver in comparison. Even the iPhone is thicker than the Adamo XPS.
Now that I’m done geeking out about the profile view of this laptop, it’s time to face reality. Making something that incredibly thin means two things: It’s going to be inordinately expensive and it won’t be very powerful.

Dell would have to craft some seriously proprietary parts to make everything less than 1cm in thickness. That means all the parts are going to be way more expensive than standard laptop parts. Finding a display that’s extra thin so you have room for a keyboard underneath will cost extra too. Come to think of it, are the keys going to be just little sheets of metal? How else do you fit them in there?

You can tell the Adamo XPS took some special engineering, just by looking at the strange hinge setup on it (pic above). Obviously they’ve had to cram most of the components behind the screen hinge. But it looks messy and inelegant. Let’s hope they didn’t make the whole thing a mess of inelegance just so they could keep it under a centimeter thick.

For more tech news, see the blog home page or these related posts:

Flash 10.1 Coming to Windows Mobile and WebOS Phones Soon

Sony Developing Single Lens 3D Camera

Newspaper App for Sharp Aquos TVs

Microsoft Launches Free Antivirus Software

Microsoft Courier Tablet Rumors Get Very Interesting