Dell tantalises with ultraslim Adamo

 

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By Stuart Turton in Las Vegas

Posted on 9 Jan 2009 at 21:00

Dell teased attendees of its CES press conference this morning with a new 10in netbook, and the first look at the Adamo, but details were infuriatingly short.

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Though the display may be only slightly larger than the Mini 9, the Mini 10 features a number of significant improvements over its smaller sibling.

The 10in screen offers a resolution of 1280x720, bringing netbooks ever closer to the domain of traditional laptops, and there's a multi-touch trackpad for scrolling zooming, and even accessing navigational shortcuts allowing you to jump to the homepage, for example.

As with the screen, the keyboard has been expanded to take advantage of the full length of the chassis. However, it's beneath the keyboard where things really heat up. The Mini 10 will feature a GPS unit, television tuner, Wi-Fi and mobile broadband connection.

Aside from a 1.6Ghz Atom processor, there's no other word on specification, or release date.

At the same event Dell also took the opportunity to show off its uber-sleek, MacBook Air rival, dubbed Adamo. The 13in laptop arrived in the hands of supermodel Hollis, and while the company helpfully explained that Adamo means "to fall in love with" in Latin, it offered no other information on what we can expect inside.

In fact, the only hint towards specification came with Michael Tatelman, vice president of consumer sales and marketing for Dell, insisting it wasn't a netbook and therefore wouldn't feature an Atom processor. Referring to the possible specification, he would only say that it would be "better than you would expect".

On the peripheries of the presentation, the company also trotted out a USB digital TV tuner, that will allow you to access free regional television signals in your country. The device is currently being tailored for US, UK, Japanese and Chinese markets, and will go for $50 in the US. No word on UK pricing was given.