Dell’s Adamo XPS is certainly a striking piece of tech – any notebook that thin is going to grab our attention, and that’s before you add in a spytastic touch-strip to open it – but it turns out the company had even more ambitious plans initially.  PC World managed to score some time with some of Dell’s Adamo XPS prototypes, including versions with multitouch LCD trackpads and even a zero-profile touchscreen keyboard.

Like the Sharp Mebius NJ70A, one of Dell’s concepts in the run up to design finalisation had an LCD touchscreen serving double-duty as a trackpad.  In the end, though, they axed the idea because they felt it would add too much cost to what’s already a costly machine.  As for the touchscreen keyboard, that used the same technology as the opening-strip, but the absence of tactile feedback saw it shelved.

Finally – and this one really goes to show the lust for skinniness among Dell’s engineers these days – they tried a version with the ports hidden in a pop-up section, but it added a tiny bit more thickness, so got canned.  In the end, the Adamo XPS ended up reasonably gimmick-free (though only when you compare it to the prototypes) but no less tempting.

[via Gizmodo]

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Dell Adamo XPS prototypes played with multitouch trackpads, touch-sensitive keyboards, more