MSI Wind User

So just how cool does the Wind blow? Is it a Khamsin or a Mistral? All lame jokes aside, Laptop Mag brought their thermometer back out to see how how hot the Wind runs.

The bottom of the Wind is where it was the coolest, and also beat out all the other laptops tested - a balmy 93F. The keyboard also came in at 93F getting beat out by a Dell and a Cloudbook. However the Wind’s trackpad was probed at 99F - only beating two generations of eeePC. The reason the trackpad is so warm is that the processor is right underneath or close by the it.

It won’t keep your tummy warm like the Mini-Note, but it’s still pretty cool

Electronista is reporting that the XP version of the Wind will start shipping June 16th for $499 and  the Linux version “later  this summer” for $399. They’ve also confirmed that black, pink, or white will be available.

It’s finally alright for the few tech mags and blogs that have a copy to talk about the Wind. Here’s a roundup of current articles:

Laptop Magazine review - 4.5 out of 5 stars!

Mini-Notebook Typing Madness: Revenge of the Wind - The MSI Wind (80/74wpm) bests HP’s Mini-Note in Laptop Mags Typing Madness challenge.

Benchmarks - VR-Zone ran a few benchmarks on the Wind and it looks pretty good considering it gets 5-6 hours of battery life.

Boot off: the Wind vs. the HP 2133 Mini-Note: and the Wind takes first with about 32 seconds!

And finally, probably the worst news about the Wind:

Upgrading the RAM will void your warranty. I am very disappointed by this… Hopefully they will change their stance on this.

Cnet.co.uk has a photo hands on review of the Wind. Since they’re still under NDA until Computex (presumably that’s when Atom and the Wind will be officially announced) there isn’t a whole lot of new info except for the button. What is the button? It lets you over clock the CPU by 20% while on AC and if it’s pressed while running on the battery it puts the Wind into low power mode. Most of us will be leaving it on ‘boost’ all the time though

Read

msiwind.net forums user doody has been playing with a Singapore version of the Wind for the past four or five days. Here’s a couple of Doody’s benchmarks compared to the HP 2133 Mini-Note @ at 1.6Ghz,  ASUS eeePC at 600Mhz and another ASUS eeeCP at 990Mhz.

It’s pretty interesting to see that the 990Mhz Celeron in the eeePC #2 bests the 1.6Ghz Atom. These tests focus mainly on the CPU, so the eeePC’s SSD drive shouldn’t make much of a difference. Doody noted he got over two and a half hours of battery life on the 3-cell while testing the Wind out. That’s a pretty good start, and it doesn’t put it far off the claimed six hour mark with the 6-cell battery.

Benchmarks taken from http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=27048, http://www.forums.msiwind.net/viewtopic.php?p=320#p320 and http://www.hp2133guide.com/mini-note-performance-tests-with-windows-xp/

User doody over at forums.msiwind.net scored some good comparison pics of Asus’ eeePC and MSI’s Wind. It looks like the Wind’s keyboard is bigger than the eeePC’s. Hopefully it’s a big as I think it looks (that’s what she said ;)) in these pics - right inbetween the Mini-Note’s and the eeePC’s keyboard size.

Read the full post

Over on the VR-Zone forums, user vrzone24hrs posted some new shots of a blue MSI Wind. The most interesting pic is what appears to be the bottom side of the motherboard:

Expansys no longer has any version of the MSI Wind listed on their site. They did have several UK models available for pre-order. I emailed them, along with some other vendors, a few days ago asking when they would have the US version in stock. They were the only company not to respond. I’m going to try calling and see if they’re still honoring the existing pre-orders or not.

*UPDATE* Just spoke with an Expansys rep and he said all pre-orders will be fulfilled. The reason Expansys took down the Wind according to the rep is they weren’t actually supposed to be selling them yet. Intel wants to officially announce the new Atom in June and doesn’t want to get “scooped”.

Japanese site PCwatch (I think that is the name) benchmarked the “MSI Wind PC” running a 1.33Ghz Atom Z520 (Silverthorne) processor against the eeePC 900. The comparisons weren’t completely equal because the Atom based PC was running Vista but had faster RAM in it, and the eeePC has an SSD drive with XP. I’ve also added in PCMark05 benchmarks from the 1.6Ghz Mini-Note running XP and Vista.

+ = Higher is better
- = Lower is better
I’m not familiar with HDBench, so if someone could let me know which is better that would be great!

I’m a little underwhelmed by how the Atom is performing here. I was expecting it to be at least as fast as the Celeron. From what I could decipher of the translated text it also has problems playing high-def video. However it still has bested the Mini-Note as “Video Flash video is just fine” with Vista. The extra 267Mhz will definitely be welcome on the Wind.

Laptop Mag scored an interview with MSI’s Andy Tung and got the new specs of the Wind from him as well! Two models are set to release on June 3rd: a Linux version for $399 and a Windows XP version for $549. Once again Linux gets shafted with less RAM and a smaller battery:

Linux Version ($399)
CPU:1.6GHz Intel Atom
Operating System: Linux Novell SUSE
Chipset: 945GMS+ ICH7-M
Display: 10-inch/ 1024×600
Hard Disk Drive: 80GB / 2.5” SATA
VGA: UMA
Memory: 512MB DDR2/ 667MHz
Card Reader: 4-in-1 (SD,MMC,MS, MS Pro)
USB Ports: 3
Mic-in/Headphone
Webcam: 1.3 MP
WLAN: 802.11b/g
Bluetooth: No
Battery: Three Cells / 2.5 hrs
Dimension: 10.23 x 7.08 x 0.748 inches
Weight 2.3 lbs

Windows XP Version
CPU:1.6GHz Intel Atom
Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition
Chipset: 945GMS+ ICH7-M
Display: 10-inch/ 1024×600
Hard Disk Drive: 80GB / 2.5” SATA
VGA: UMA
Memory: 1GB DDR2/ 667MHz
Card Reader: 4-in-1 (SD,MMC,MS, MS Pro)
USB Ports: 3
Mic-in/Headphone
Webcam: 1.3 MP
WLAN: 802.11b/g
Bluetooth: Yes
Battery: Six Cells / 5.5 hrs
Dimension: 10.23 x 7.08 x 0.748-inches
Weight 2.6 lbs

I can’t wait to get mine!