Adamo XPS Refresh?

I'm a somewhat pleased (after months of displeasure) SXPS1645 owner *points to sig* but after 5 months of carrying this thing with me to my campus daily (and pretty much everywhere else I go) this machine is heavy and big and bit overkill since when I'm outside I rarely use it for video editing and gaming which I tend to do at home. So for the Fall(ish) I'm going to be in the market for an ultraportable, but after using this machine it's going to be hard to go to a machine with a wimpy atom processor or even a ULV C2D. So I found the Adamo XPS and it appeals to me in the same way the SXPS did, an eye catching design that isn't bulky and still performs well. However looking at the specs currently available for it I was disappointed. It's using a hodgepodge of outdated parts. I wanted to basically start a thread on potential component refreshes for the Adamo XPS, in the hopes that by the time I'm ready to purchase one some of these things will become reality. Also I'm curious about other brands of ultraportables (NOT netbooks) that people use/have used and would recommend.

 

I'd like to see Dell do something along the lines of this:
Processor: i3-540 (with switchable graphics enabled -_-)
GPU: I don't really care too much here but something discrete would be nice, maybe NVIDIA Optimus?
The ram and current HDD options are fine with me although it'd be awesome if the SSD they offered was an Intel drive...
My final gripe with the current Adamo XPS is the Battery life, ~3 Hrs if you buy the bigger battery. That's pathetic for an ultraportable. I'd like to see that somehow get up to ~5-6 hours.

 

bump......

 

Maybe they are waiting for the ULV i5 processors?

 

Not going to happen - this thing is fanless, they may be able to do a core i ULV processor of some sort though (would have to be an i5 or i7 as there are no ULV i3s).

Too much heat, see above

Agreed

The sony vaio x ultrathin gets like 11 hours battery life (granted with an atom processor). According to anandtech review, this only gets 1 hour with standard battery - and geting the big one completely breaks up the nice lines of this beauty.

For ultraportables without an atom you have few choices:

New Sony Vaio Z - its a monster spec wise (core i7, dual SSD, BlueRay player, discrete G335m card, switchable graphics), weighs less than the adamo xps, has same dimensions as a studio xps 13, but costs 2 grand for the base configuration

Dell Adamo (not xps) - for $899 from dell epp site you get same specs as the XPS for half the price. It's still thin albeit you can't shave with it! Right now there is an additional $50 off $799 coupon you can get by signing up for dell newsletter (it appeard as a banner for me on dell's site during checkout) for a total of $849.

 

Thanks I've been looking at Sony Vaio X series...2 grand is probably my cap it's almost what I paid for my current laptop. I want portability + power...not a combo that you find too much. There's also an Asus portable laptop the U30Jc which sounds pretty promising but I have no personal experience with Asus quality. The Vaio Z config I was looking at is rated for 9-11 hours of battery life so real world probably 7-10 lol which is still good for the level of performance. It's a shame Dell is always behind in terms of refreshing components. The one exception being the SXPS 1645 they were one of the first if not the first using the i7 mobile lineup, but then again look how that turned out...

 

I tried out a Vaio X in store - it stutters playing HD content =/

 

I find that hard to believe with what's inside of that little monster...perhaps it was a software/codec or an isolated issue?

 

It's got an atom cpu and no discrete graphics....what would it use to play HD content?

 

I think we're talking about different laptops. The one I was looking at on the sony style site had an i7 or i5 + a discrete Nvidia GPU.