Renowned DIY website iFixIt and TechRepublic have gotten their hands on a Dell Adamo to do what they do best. It is disassembled in all of its luxurious glory for you to gawk at its private parts. They also include a number of comparison shots with the MacBook Air. No ThinkPad X301 love?

Looking at the pictures, the design that went into this machine is impressive. While not a tool-less design, it doesn’t have any external screws. This also means you need a fairly specialized tool to crack it open, essentially a very fine tipped flat blade; see image 24. Since the machine was designed around SSD with no mechanical drive consideration, it lacks the traditional pocket for a 1.8 or 2.5-inch drive and thus just has the slim circuit board loaded with solid state memory chips. The size of the wireless modules used is also impressive, about a thumb’s width it appears; check out image 38 to see what I mean.

It’s interesting to note that in order to maximize placement of different components, they have very few components actually directly connected to the motherboard. Components like the SSD and wireless cards are placed “remotely” and connected to the motherboard via a ribbon cable. The wireless cards are actually on their own “data card” of sorts, which runs to the motherboard via a ribbon cable. The hard drive cable actually merges with the wireless cable to run back to the motherboard in one ribbon cable. Due to this, the motherboard itself is rather tiny. Other interesting tid bits:

• The Windows COA is hidden under the hinge cover (image 65)
• RAM is soldered onto the motherboard – no upgrading for you! (image 55)
• The display hinge doesn’t look all that impressive (image 74)

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