Dell’s super-thin, super-secret new Adamo

Timing is everything. I say that as an investor with a track record of buying high and selling low, and now it looks like Dell learning the same thing. The latest in its Adamo family of ultra-thin notebooks is really, really thin. As in 9.99mm thick. That’s 0.40 inches for us in the States.

Dell thought it would be cute to announce the new super-skinny laptop on September 9. Get it? A 9.99mm thick Adamo XPS notebook on 9/9/09. Sure, it’s corny but it might have worked if something else super-skinny hadn’t sucked all the oxygen out of the room, for that was the day Steve Jobs returned to the stage he enjoys so much to introduce new iPods.

While waiting outside the Yerba Buena Arts Center before the show, I was in the area where they had all the reporters corralled, and you could hear idle chatter among them about a new, super-thin new Adamo, and it would be dismissed almost as quickly as it was brought up.

To quote Richard B. Riddick in the film Pitch Black: “Extremely. Bad. Timing.”

Dell didn’t divulge any details on the Adamo, just a side profile showing its thin profile. At 9.99mm, it’s thinner than the 17.4mm MacBook Air and even the iPhone, although the Air tapers from the thickest point to the thinnest area, by the keyboard. The Adamo is the same thickness all the way through.