HANDS ON GUIDE

6 - MSI Wind

Not to be outdone by arch-rival Asus, MSI has its own netbook in the works.

After seeing Asus forge ahead with the Eee PC, other Taiwanese computer companies haven’t rested on their laurels, and first out of the bag with an Eee competitor is MSI, with the Atom-powered Wind. Obviously, jokes about flatulence aren’t that popular in Taiwan, otherwise MSI would have realised what a bad choice of name this could turn out to be. That said, if Nintendo can make a success of the Wii though, any name has a chance.

Like the Eee 900, the Wind comes in versions with both XP and Vista, but a crucial difference is the addition of an 80GB hard drive rather than the SSD that you get with the Eee. The memory capacity is bigger than other netbooks: 1GB as standard, upgradeable to 2GB, which is enough to safely assume your Windows experience will be free of disk swapping. The screen is bigger too, 10 inches compared to the 8.9 of the Eee 900. The specification reads more like one you would expect from a full notebook rather than a netbook. Other bells and whistles additions include Bluetooth, 3 USB ports, a 1.3MP webcam and a 4 in one card reader.

The Wind has just hit UK shores, with a price hovering around £330. One design change that was made at the last minute is the downgrading of the battery from six to three cells. This reduces the longevity and the attractiveness of the device, since it was touted as having six hours of battery life. MSI has said that the reason for this was a shortage caused by a fire, and there will be a six cell version coming in the future.

For more details, see MSI's website

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