Yesterday, November 29th began the IT Month in Taiwan. To celebrate the event, MSI have unveiled a special edition MSI Wind U100.
The U100, which features a 10 inch screen, 160GB hard drive, Intel Atom processor, 1GB of RAM, Wifi and bluetooth, has previously been released in Angel White, Imperial Black, Special Love Edition and Loving Pink. The special edition U100 comes in a “cherry red” color, which looks very festive. Unfortunately though, if this cherry red MSI netbook appeals to you, it is only available in Taiwan.
There’s no word on the price of the red netbook, but prices are usually slashed in the IT Month, so hopefully this will be available for a bargain price.
Although U.S. users have had their chance on getting their hands on the MSI Wind through online stores for quiet sometime now, words on the street say that it will soon be arriving on US stores via Best Buy outlets. That’s right folks, this is the closest that you can get on the MSI Wind before buying it. If the slew of hands-on videos on YouTube have not convinced you to buy the MSI Wind yet, here’s your chance to make a decision. Try it out first at your nearest Best Buy store.
The MSI models available at Best Buy outlets is the Wind U100 with a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 processor, a 10-inch display 1GB memory, 120GB HDD and Windows XP Home. It will set you back for $399.
Now, here’s one low-down. As expected the MSI Wind U100 available at Best Buy comes only with the 3-cell battery which could only give you a maximum of 2 hours usage. How we wish, it was the 6-cell battery instead. But hey, you can always find another battery, at extra cost though.
The MSI Wind U100 is available now at Best Buy Stores in black or white design.
Florian, a member on the German MSI Wind forums, has created a “fake” Apple Mac netbook using his MSI Wind.
To create the final design, a Dremel was needed as well as six white LEDs. Paper, tape and aluminum foil also seem to be necessary with those holding everything in place inside.
Florian then went a step further with this project. He’s created a spoof ad for the MacBook Mini which you can check out below.
EeePCNews.de have recently received pictures of a prototype 9 cell battery. The 9 cell battery is currently being designed for the MSI Wind, which currently comes with a 3 or 6 cell battery.
The 9 cell batteries haven’t been priced yet but they’re expected to be available from November. There’s also no official word about the weight of the 9 cell battery, or how long the battery will last. The predicted battery life is 9-10 hours which is a great improvement over the 5-6 hours of a 6 cell battery.
Brad Linder Lee Mathews from Liliputing has been testing his MSI Wind out with Vista on and has given feedback on the Wind’s performance.
He first replaced the 80GB hard drive with a 160GB hard drive and chose to install Vista Home Premium. Once the Wind booted in to Vista, it ran very well with a couple minor annoyances. The drivers had to be loaded for both the wired lan and wireless. Also the i945 graphics wasn’t recognised straight away, but both were easily solved.
When running several programs and tabs on firefox there was no noticable different to an Intel Core 2 laptop. However Photoshop CS2 was found to be hard on the Atom processor, but this is the case in XP as well.
Battery life was tested and provided about 5 hours. The brightness was set at 70% and lowered down nearer the end which gave an extra 15 to 20 minutes. Resuming from hibernate and stand by is also quicker than on XP. Overall the battery lasts about 30 minutes longer while on Vista.
Spotted a local PC dealer in one of the Malls in the Philippines selling the MSI Wind U100 at around $549. I immediately checked Amazon and it is currently listing the MSI Wind U100 at an SRP of 552.85. This model comes with the 1GB RAM, 80GB HDD, Windows XP and 6-Cell Battery Pack. That’s definitely a big difference in prices, right?
But wait here’s something more. As part of an ongoing promotion, the said Philippine store is offering to upgrade the memory of the MSI Wind to 2GB and its HDD to 160GB. Now, that is definitely a big steal! The promo period runs until September 30, and I’m hoping to raise some funds to get one for myself. Maybe it’s time to replace my Asus Eee PC 701 4G model by now. Any donors out there? :-)
Incidentally, said store is also selling another version of the MSI Wind called U100Lx. What makes this model different is the fact that it only comes with a free DOS OS. This unit sells for around $422. And the store is also offering to upgrade its HDD to 160GB for free!
If you’re wondering if it’s worth waiting for the 6-cell version of the MSI Wind, Kevin from JKonTheRun puts the MSI Wind battery under the test and gives his opinion.
Kevin performed two tests as the MSI Wind allows you to underclock the CPU with it’s unique “Turbo” button. Both tests were run with Wi-Fi on, 50% screen brightness and Windows power management turned off. BatteryEater was used to perform the tests, which gives the minimum battery life.
On the first test performed, the results were 3 hours and 39 minutes. When “turbo” is turned on, the minimum battery run time is increased to 4 hours and 59 minutes. Kevin points out that these are the worst possible scenario results as every day usage will not consume as much processing as the BatteryEater. Under normal usage conditions, he believes that you could get nearly 5 hours out of the MSI Wind without underclocking, but 7 hours with the underclocking turned on.
Overall, he thinks that it is worth holding out for the 6-cell version, because not only is there added runtime, but the 5200 mAh battery is designed well to nicely into the Wind, without adding much bulk.
After recently changing their netbook’s touchpads to sentelic from Synaptics, giving less functionality, MSI are upgrading the hard drives in one of their netbooks.
MSI will be upgrading the hard drive of their U100 to a 120GB hard drive which will ship as standard. MSI should be starting this immediately, however it could still take a while before the 80GB ones are sold and you start seeing the 120GB version.
MSI’s U90, U100’s little brother with a 8.9 inch screen, will continue to ship with the original 80GB hard drive.
The global battery shortage is rolling on it seems but, it has come to light that online store Mwave is selling the MSI Wind with a 6 cell battery at last. They are in stock at $570 which is more than MSI indicated they would cost when they announced the Wind however, the global battery shortage then kicked in and MSI could only offer the 3 cell version until now.
There doesn’t seem to be any other retailers stocking the 6 cell version of the MSI Wind so if you want to grab one, head to Mwave and you may be lucky. Even MSI’s own website isn’t selling these netbooks yet.
The first third party 4900mAh batteries for the MSI Wind are starting to appear for sale.
Bluetrade are providing batteries that should be fully compatible with both the MSI Wind U90 and U100 models. The batteries should also be suitable for use in MSI Wind ‘clones’. Material.net is selling these batteries around 79 Euros which is $118 US.
There is no news of a release elsewhere in the world yet but, we will keep you informed as news comes in.
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