MSI Wind User

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

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:

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!