That is a great deal for $900, but I'm not sure it's an MBA competitor.<p>Screen res is lower than the 13" MBA's screen (1440x900), which to me is a pretty big deal. I find the 1440x900 res on my 13" MBA just barely workable, I wouldn't want any less vertical resolution these days.<p>The other thing is that the Dell runds Windows. While this is totally a personal preference, I just do not like working in Windows. Had this machine been available for $500 with a higher-res screen when I got my MBA, I still would have opted for the Mac. I'm aware of the hackintosh projects as well, but I don't really enjoy fighting with my OS anymore.
The comparison of technical specifications leaves out one very large detail: weight. At 3.97 pounds, the Dell is more than a third heavier than the MacBook Air at 2.9 pounds.<p>The form factor and weight of the MacBook Air is its killer feature, not its CPU/GPU/RAM/SSD.
Not for me. I bought an awesome spec'ed Toshiba laptop early in 2010 and tweaked the Windows and Ubuntu installations. All was good until I discovered that I just missed the keyboard and trackpad arrangements on MacBooks. In the last few months I have bought a MacBook Pro and the tiny 11" MacBook Air.<p>The tiny MBA is awesome to use and as needed I plug into a large monitor. I still occasionally use the MB Pro when I need a heavy weight Java IDE, large local data stores, etc., but for most of what I do for work (Ruby, Clojure, Common Lisp, and writing with Latex) the Air is fully capable and a great experience. I use the Air about 80% of the time, the Pro about 15% of the time, and the Toshiba about 5% of the time.
I don't own a MBA, but I have owned a lot of Dell laptop's over the past decade (including some of their higher-end XPS laptops). I don't know how good the MBA build-quality is, but if it's even slightly better-than-average, then this Dell is in no way a "competitor."<p>I swore off buying Dell laptops after the last XPS I bought burnt through two separate motherboards (it's still warm to the touch when idling). Previous Dell laptops had an array of different issues: hinges that became brittle and broke, fans that stopped working, etc. Their hardware just seems ridiculously error prone, which explains why they're able to price themselves so competitively.
Am I better off buying the new (13") MBA, or a Sony VAIO Z? <a href="http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?storeId=10151&catalogId=10551&langId=-1&categoryId=8198552921644570897" rel="nofollow">http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryD...</a><p>FWIW, I'd want to install Ubuntu on either one (anticipating that the MBA will be much more difficult in this regard.)<p>Any advice?
An equivalent model is the Asus U35jc (which I just bought) :<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/ASUS-U35JC-A1-13-3-Inch-Laptop-Silver/dp/B003UNHGFQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1293377216&sr=8-1" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/ASUS-U35JC-A1-13-3-Inch-Laptop-Silver/...</a><p>In particular, the 10h battery life is pretty neat, didn't saw the numbers for the Adamo.