Laptop Wars: The MacBook Air vs. Dell Adamo

Two laptops: One's a Mac, one's a PC. Which is better? PC World takes both notebooks and stages a computer kumite to make a few quick calls.

By Darren Gladstone, PC World

You know all about the on-again, off-again PC-Mac turf war, of course. Which is better? One thing we can tell you is that PC makers sure are taking note of Apple's awesome design work. And that's the setup for the welterweight matchup we have going on today.

In this corner (pictured below right), the MacBook Air, the sleek standard-bearer for how Apple does computing. In the other, the Dell Adamo, the spunky up-and-comer that packs on ports…and takes some not-so-subtle jabs at the big "A."

Neither company really positions its ultraslim ultraportable as a high-performance hot rod. Heck, both of them eschew optical drives to stay lean and mean. But they're both expensive—very, very expensive. We figured it was time to find out if either the Air or the Adamo has what it takes to win.

Now before these two palookas start mixing it up, here's what they bring to the fight. The MacBook Air is the cagey vet. It has improved with better processors and an honest-to-goodness graphics card, nVidia's GeForce 9400M, so it can actually play some games. The Air we last reviewed offered a 1.86GHz Core 2 Duo CPU and 2GB of RAM, and scored a 78 in WorldBench 6. In our battery-life tests, the Air survived for about 2.5 hours before sputtering out. It can accommodate a 120GB hard disk. But then there's also the dreaded "Apple Tax": These machines range in price from $1,799 to $2,499.
Originally published by PC World. View original version.