The netbook–a small inexpensive notebook–has been around for months now, but we are still seeing significant progress in the products that are coming out. New manufacturers are entering the market, some of which are able to distinguish themselves against well established products like the Eee PC and HP’s Mini-Note 2133. Some off the new offerings are inevitably me-too products, but others are worth getting excited about. This second group just might be enough to pull in people who have so far been resisting the urge to pick up one of these secondary systems.
MSI’s Wind is a 10-inch netbook, designed to compete with the Asus Eee PC 901/1000/1000h as well as any number of similar products that are now available. You might not be familiar with Micro-Star International but they are turning a lot of heads with the Wind, not just for its reasonable price but also a smart design and its advantages over the rest of the field.
The Wind is another white netbook that is built on a small, plastic-y platform, but it differentiates itself with a 10-inch display and an 80GB hard drive. It also bucks the original netbook trends by arriving with Windows XP as opposed to a Linux distribution (a SuSE version will be available in the future). None of these features are completely unique to the Wind though, so the device is competing with its overall quality and design as opposed to any specific killer feature. The Wind uses Intel’s Atom processor as opposed to a Celeron, like the Eee PC 701/900, or a processor from VIA, as seen on HP’s 2133. This means reasonable power and an extended battery life over more power demanding processors.
The Wind is noticeably larger than the original Eee PC (with its 7-inch display) which most people will agree is a good thing. Over the past few months we have seen lots of backlash to the size of the 701, not just its tiny screen but the hard-to-use keyboard. This places the Wind at nearly the size of a 12-inch ultraportable, but gets is a surprisingly usable keyboard and a display that runs at 1024×600. You trade off the solid-state storage for an 80GB mechanical drive, which cuts down on the notebook’s durability, but allows for more storage at a cheaper price than something like the Eee PC 1000. The upshot is that the Wind uses a 2.5-inch disk so it is upgradeable if you are willing to take the system apart.
The Wind is largely plastic, but build quality is solid enough that it should be reliable. It could be smaller, but the extra size means typing on it is a pleasant experience, unlike the original Eee PC which was cramped and difficult. The display also looks great, with a rich picture and surprisingly nice image. At 1024×600 you can actually get things done too (sometimes more than one thing at once), something which has been an issue on undersized systems, from UMPCs to netbooks.
When it comes to actually using the Wind, things get interesting. The near-full-sized keyboard has been one of its strongest selling points, and it does not disappoint. If you are moving from something smaller you will be surprised by how good the typing experience can be. That said, the keyboard is still small and it doesn’t get close to that of something like the Thinkpad X200, IdeaPad U110, or Sony TZ, all of which are not much larger than the Wind. The main keyset is fine, but the abbreviated punctuation keys cause a fair amount of accidents before you get used to the keyboard. Cursor controls are handled by reasonably sized trackpad with a rocker button below it. It does its job and is nothing to complain about, though dual buttons are generally preferable to a rocker.
We’ve been hearing a lot about how underpowered the Atom processor is hadbut it tended to do pretty well during testing. Set up with Windows XP and a gigabyte of RAM the Wind handles itself nicely–it’s clearly no powerhouse but when doing anything that you would normally do on an ultraportable notebook (office work, checking webmail, etc.) it gets along fine.
Within Windows XP was the Wind saw the occasional slowdown, but if you are using it mostly for web access and word processing it will be fine. If you need much more than the Atom you’d be better off going with an ultraportable with a standard notebook processor (even an ULV one), expect a big price increase though. As a secondary notebook, the Wind’s processor does the job. An upgrade to the RAM could help out a bit but it’s not necessary.
As for the LCD, thanks to a generous size and LED backlighting it looks quite nice. The picture has good saturation so colors really come through and while text is small it is legible. It turns out that 1024×600 is enough for reading on the web as well as multitasking, whereas most smaller displays could not be used comfortable for multitasking or for extended periods of time.
The battery issue has been an interesting one for the Wind. At release it was only available with the 3-cell battery, which would limit its life to about two hours. Under standard mobile conditions (WiFi in use, backlight at 50%, doing light work) the battery lasted for two hours and seven minutes (to 5%). By dropping the backlight and shutting off WiFi you can squeeze out another thirty minutes or so, but in order to get the Wind into the 4+ hour range you will need to upgrade to the 6-cell battery. The battery will not be available until September, but there are reports of the Wind surpassing the five hour mark with it.
As you can probably tell at this point MSI’s Wind is one of the strongest netbooks that we have seen to date. For $499 it handles everything thrown at it, while having a better design and more reasonable price than most of the competition. There are a few downsides that should be kept in mind though. The Wind has a hefty LCD so when open it wants to tip backwards. Also it nicely includes and matching carrying case, but the inside of the case is a soft fuzzy material that combines with the Wind’s smooth exterior so the the notebook can spill right out if you are not careful (I had a close call). Finally you get 80GB of storage, but the Wind does not have an SSD. This has been part of the attraction of netbooks and the move back to a standard hard drive seems like a step backwards.
Overall, the Wind had a lot of hype behind it, but it does not disappoint. Of the devices in its class right now it seems to be the best all-around bet and unless you have special requests, like that SSD, it’s looking like the one to get. Right now it’s good, but throw in the 6-cell battery and we might just have a category killer on our hands.
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