Slashdot Mirror
First Reviews of the MSI Wind Ultra-Portable Laptop
Ken E. writes "UK tech website Mobile Computer has an early hands-on review of the MSI Wind — a £329 ultraportable notebook that will compete head-on with the Asus Eee PC 900. In its favour are a 10in screen, better keyboard and, perhaps most important of all, an Intel Atom 1.6GHz dual-core processor (though the site shies away from mentioning this open secret due to what sound like NDA constraints). They like it a lot — is this finally a worthy Eee PC alternative?" (£329 is about $650US at the moment.) An anonymous reader points to CNET's hands-on photo gallery of the Wind; CNET's reviewer says the MSI Wind is the first mini notebook with an overclock button. Barence adds another review at PC Pro.
Uh it said a worthy alternative to the eee pc, not the OLPC..
I had one MSI mainboard that was DOA. No problems getting a replacement. Since then it's been used in a small office file server which runs 24/7 in a (sadly) unventilated closet, survived a number of power outages and even a power supply explosion (literally). Running for three years now ann not a single problem... with the mainboard anyway :)
MSI is certainly not a top brand but they're not complete junk either, in my experience.
=Smidge=
This article lists the US prices as:
Linux version: $560
WinXP version: $604
and the UK prices as:
Linux version: £320 (~630 USD)
WinXP version: £350 (~690 USD)
Or it could be $399
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
I'm with you on the VGA output. DVI, however, is a bit too big to consider on a laptop, so IMHO they should switch to HDMI instead (which is probably where computer monitors are headed anyway).
As for the enter/backspace key, I hate those huge L-shaped enter keys and a regular-sized backspace key is a problem. In fact, on my Apple keyboard right here, the delete key is just a tad shorter than the return key.
If you rarely use backspace, more power to you. But for the rest of us, a regular-sized backspace key would be too much trouble. In fact, I'd even say that if you can't hit a non-L-shaped enter key, you're the one with a problem.