Well, is it a notebook PC or a piece of fashion jewelry? You'd never be able to tell looking at Dell, Inc.'s (NASDAQ: DELL) ad for the new Adamo ultra-chic notebook PC, the company is trying to out-do Apple, Inc.'s (NASDAQ: AAPL) MacBook Air and other super-thin and super-expensive laptop PCs with more thin than more substance. At $2,000, the Dell Adamo is a weak PC performance-wise, but a sleek piece of machinery design-wise.

We've all watched as laptop PCs sold like hotcakes over the last few years and gradually take market share from the desktop PC. Customers are finding out that the computing power they need is plentifully supplied by an all-in-one portable laptop and the cables, desk space and noise of a desktop PC simply isn't needed any longer.

For the first time, laptop PC sales outranked desktop PC sales during last quarter. Brands like Hewlett-Packard Corp. (NYSE: HPQ), Dell, Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL), Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Taiwan's Acer sold an astounding 38.6 million portable PCs, compared with 38.5 million desktop units, according to research firm iSuppli.

HP continued dominating laptop PCs, with 18.8% of sales during the last quarter. Dell was quite a bit behind the leader with13.9% of sales. Acer took in 12.2% of sales. Although the desktop PC is far from dead, the consumer market is slowly abandoning them for cheap and powerful laptops as time goes by.

When is the last time you saw a perfectly-equipped laptop PC for under $600? Look in the ads from any Sunday newspaper -- they are there. And, customers are buying them like crazy.

After seeing news about the Dell, Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) "E" mobile internet device (read: miniature laptop) last week, I was perplexed. True, Asus has had excellent luck with the Eee PC and Hewlett-Packard Corp. (NYSE: HPQ) has announced a similar miniature laptop-type PC. But for some reason, Dell's new product is being marketed as the device for the "30-minute web experience."

The new Dell E will come in two screen configurations -- a 12" and an 8.9". Basically, these are standard laptop PCs with scaled down hardware and ambitions, meant to fill the hole between the smartphone (or iPhone) and the full, 45-second-to-boot laptop PC. I thought this experiment was already run years ago with the ridiculously-priced UMPCs, which cost as much or more than a standard laptop PC. The good news is that Dell and HP's creations are starting out at a nice price point: $299.

This is basically a new price point for a laptop PC, no matter what the marketing says. This is good news for consumers. The combination of physical size, power and price may finally sway some buyers who really need a portable, instantly-usable laptop PC for short bursts of time. That, or the market will prove that there just is not a profitable spot between a smartphone with PC-like functions and a fully-usable laptop PC. That is, until all the things you do on a laptop focus around web access utilities and not applications like Microsoft Word and Excel and Adobe Photoshop.

In order to drive up market share in those niche PC categories, Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) is joining the fray of the miniature laptop PC with the new "E" and "E Slim." Wow, those are catchy names. Many manufacturers offer ultraportable mobile PCs designs, but many have also failed miserably. Now Dell wants to get in on the action of those who would love to purchase a high-margin, tiny laptop for all those internet tasks. These are dubbed "netbooks."

Dell joins fellow competitors Hewlett-Packard Corp. (NYSE: HPQ) and Taiwan's Asus in making a tiny laptop PC that uses flash memory instead of an actual hard drive and comes with a display that is less than 10 inches measured diagonally (standard laptop screens are 15.4 inches). HP unveiled its miniature notebook just a month ago, so Dell did not waste a bit of time here. In addition to the "E," Dell's "E Slim" takes aim at the larger, ultra-thin laptop market made famous by Apple Inc.'s (NASDAQ: AAPL) MacBook Air, and followed up with HP's recently announced Voodoo Envy.

What are all these manufacturers trying to do with all the slim-n-thin and tiny laptop designs? First of all, find some margin playroom now that the popular laptop PC category has seen shrunken retail prices as of late, although the Dell "E" will start at $299 when it debuts later this summer. Also, to continue finding those niches, there is pent-up demand. The "pocketable" laptop PC has been forever elusive, but some of these designs are getting very close to finding the perfect balance between usability and portability.

When Dell, Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) became the biggest cheerleader for the new SSD (solid state drive) laptop PC, many other companies were waiting to see if the new product would be a success. SSDs are hard drives without moving parts and use computer memory chips to store data instead of a spinning hard drive. One problem is that laptops with the SSD feature cost about $900 more than standard laptop PCs. You can buy an entire extra laptop for that.

Even worse, it seems that the first crop of these PCs is not living up to the hype. The one saving grace is that an SSD-equipped laptop is silent -- but the speed gains and performance that would be the main selling points are just not there. And while Dell has been the largest proponent of the SSD laptop, Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) is also taking orders for Mac laptops with SSD drives. Other manufacturers may follow.

Reports state that a "computer manufacturer" is seeing a return rate of SSD-equipped laptop PCs of 20% to 30%. This is due to a high failure rate. Is the $900 price premium just not cutting the mustard? Probably not. The combination of slow performance and outright failure is said to be responsible for the high return rate of SSD laptop PCs, and this is probably not sitting well with Samsung Electronics, which makes the SSD drives inside these laptop PCs. Although nothing is perfect out of the gate, didn't OEMs like Dell and Apple test (and test and test) these newer SSD devices extensively in multiple scenarios before allowing these products to be sold inside their own products? From reading this, that's hard to believe.

Looking for an inexpensive but functional and possibly fully-loaded laptop or desktop computer this holiday season? Whether it's for the kids or a very nice gift for someone else (maybe even yourself), there will be some incredible bargains this Friday (and Saturday in most cases) at some of the larger retailers of PCs: CompUSA, Best Buy, and Circuit City.

Although some special deals require rebates, cellular activations, and other gimmicks for the lowest "advertised price", the wait may be worth it regardless. That's what Black Friday is for, right? As laptop computers have come down dramatically in price in recent years, this year's Black Friday deals on laptops especially should get millions of bargain hunters salivating like crazy.

With that said, below are some of the deals on laptops and a few desktop PCs as well. Of course, read the fine print once you do see the ads to see how many hoops you have to jump through to get some of these prices -- things like subletting your apartment and selling an ownership stake in all your cars. Just kidding.

CompUSA
Compaq 15.4" widescreen laptop -- $199
eMachines Windows Media Center PC -- $99
HP Media Center laptop with dual-core CPU -- $549

Circuit City
Acer 15.4" laptop with dual-core CPU -- $599
Compaq 15.4" widescreen laptop -- $99

Best Buy
HP 15.4" widescreen laptop with Core Solo CPU -- $379
Compaq desktop PC with 15" LCD monitor -- $399

Wal-Mart
Compaq desktop PC with 17" LCD monitor and printer -- $588
Compaq notebook PC with printer and external speakers -- $698
No mention of a $199 laptop here -- at least, not yet. Stay tuned for Thursday's ads, though. Although a Wal-Mart executive hinted at a $199 Black Friday laptop recently, Wal-Mart may be keeping that under very secret wraps for now.

Will Dell Inc.'s (NASDAQ:DELL) famous build-in-house model continue to work for its laptop business? That is the billion-dollar question of the hour as laptop computers continue to gain in popularity over bulkier and non-portable desktop computers. With larger screens, bigger hard drives and faster processors, laptops are increasingly desktop replacements.

While competitors like Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE:HPQ) and Gateway have their machines built for them in Taiwan or China by third-party manufacturers like Quanta and Wistron, Dell continues to build the majority of its laptop computers itself, according to Cnet. This allows Dell customers to custom order a laptop system with the exact specs needed instead of purchasing a pre-built computer from HP that comes in a variety of configurations. The disadvantage for HP is that it rarely knows which configurations will sell nicely and which will be duds -- hence the possibility of inventories piling up, which is a huge drag on any company in any business.

Dell's build-to-order process eliminates much of this unknown factor. The problem is that building laptops is much trickier than building desk-top computers. They require special parts and precise engineering. Workers must be highly skilled and trained for a wider variety of difficult tasks. Can Dell keep up its world-famous custom-build strategy for laptop computers as they overtake desktops in popularity and units shipped? That's a huge question, but if that strategy can be made to work, Dell may just show up the entire industry once again.

How many reports of overheating lithium laptop batteries must we hear before airport security agents start cracking down on my Dell Inspiron or your Apple MacBook? Sure, the damage intended by terrorists from a seemingly innocuous-looking bottle of liquid would be terrible. But today's reports of overheating -- and in some cases, spontaneously combusting -- laptop batteries brought the considerable specter of an exploding laptop at 30,000 feet.

"Most of the incidents reported to the CPSC occurred around the home, but transportation-safety officials have become increasingly concerned about the threat of a laptop causing a catastrophic fire aboard a commercial jetliner," said the AP version of the report. The New York Times article brought up a fire in the overhead bin of a Lufthansa jet while on the runway in Chicago (no one has confirmed whether or not this battery was housed in a Dell laptop).

With Apple recalling MacBooks because of overheating in June, I have to wonder: how is it that shampoo is verboten, but a potentially flammable laptop can proceed on the plane, to huddle on the floor with all the other laptops, cell phones, Blackberries and illiquid snacks? Investors' minds clearly weren't going where mine is, with Dell down 1.41% in after-hours trading, Apple up a bit, and after-hours quotes unavailable for American Airlines and Delta.