Noted in passing: advert for the Dell XPS-15, containing the phrase
Finally, the power you crave in the thinnest 15" PC on the planet*.
Wow, the thinnest? But wait, what's the asterisk?
Small print time: "Based on Dell internal analysis as at February 2011. Based on a thickness comparison (front and rear measurements) of other 15" laptop PCs manufactured by HP, Acer, Toshiba, Asus, Lenovo, Samsung, Sony, MSI. No comparison made with Apple or other manufacturers not listed."
(Update: for clarification, the advert I saw appeared in print in a UK newspaper.)
From Engadget's review of the XPS-15: "it's actually a few hairs thicker than a 15-inch MacBook Pro, wider, and at 5.54 pounds, it weighs practically the same."
So that would make the XPS-15 the world's thinnest... apart from any thinner 15-inch laptops it wasn't compared against. This seems an interesting way to proceed with future advertising: the most powerful in the world* (apart from others that are more powerful). And so on.
(The Engadget review is quite thorough, and found that the XPS-15 was indeed a very powerful Windows laptop. However in the benchmarks against an Apple Macbook Pro... well, we'll leave you to read them.)
Other examples of small print where "thinnest", "fastest", "cheapest" etc is qualified down to "did we say that? Oh, not actually" welcome. Apple must surely have a few egregious ones.
