Hands on With MSI's Wind Low-cost Laptop

Tag : USB PC CAM


Taiwan's Micro-Star International announced its competitor for thenew low-cost laptop market, Wind, early this month at Computex, and I got a chance to try it out atMSI's offices in Taipei late Wednesday.

I've been skeptical about the new segment of low-cost laptop PCs,or mini-notebooks, because they seem to either be cheap at a lowprice or are priced so high you wonder why someone wouldn't just bya regular notebook PC.

Some product reviewers compare these devices to normal laptops andthat's fair when the price of the mini-notebook is similar, butoverall the low-cost versions aren't designed to compete withnormal notebook PCs. These are small laptops aimed at people whowant a small, light device that makes them easy to carry around andsurf the Internet for hours and hours.

So, battery-life, performance, screen size and the size of thekeypad were my biggest concerns, and MSI's Wind wins high marks ineach of those categories.

The company plans to sell them for US$599 in the U.S., Europe andelsewhere starting from mid-July.

The first version of the laptop will come in a variety of colorswith Microsoft Windows XP, a 1.6GHz Intel Atom microprocessor, 1Gbyte of DRAM and an 80G-byte hard disk drive (HDD). It's built toconnect wirelessly to the Internet via Wi-Fi 802.11b/g.

The $599 version of Wind also carries a 6-cell battery, good for 5to 6 hours of use, and a 10-inch LCD (liquid crystal display)screen, which is bigger than some rivals that use only 7-inch or8.9-inch screens.

You can cut corners to make the laptops cheaper, for example bychoosing a smaller, 3-cell battery, using a Linux OS, which won'tbe available at the launch, and a smaller HDD. The one component Iwouldn't scrimp on is the battery, unless money is really tight.

I liked the 6-cell battery for a few reasons. First, knowing youhave at least 5 hours of battery power means you don't really haveto take a power cable with you or search for a seat by a wallsocket. But one unexpected benefit of the larger battery is that ittilts the laptop up in a way that makes typing more comfortable.

MSI tried to make the keypad bigger than other mini-notebooks andput on a touchpad, important for me because I have beefy hands. Theonly other portable laptop I've tried is the first version ofAsustek Computer's Eee PC with a 7-inch screen, and typing on that keypad takes some gettingused to because the keys are so small. I kept hitting the wrongkeys or two keys at once.

By comparison, Wind was a nicer experience, albeit still not like anormal laptop PC. Some of Asus's more recent versions of the Eee PC, such as the 1000, have larger keypads.

The Wind, as is, performed fairly well when I used it. I wasn'table to run a thorough test, just play with it for a while and seehow it worked.

But if you want a small device that weighs about 1 kilogram and isable to connect to the Internet and multitask with simple software,the Wind is pretty nifty.

I was able to play music while surfing the Net, and open and workon a text document. It's not a machine aimed at video editing, so Ididn't bother trying. The device found MSI's wireless networkquickly and logged on, but I couldn't do much downloading becauseMSI blocks music, video and other Web sites, such as YouTube, tokeep workers focused.

The Wind's 1.3-megapixel Web cam is a nice extra for talking tofriends on video chat via Skype or MSN Messenger. There are alsoseveral slots for mini-storage cards and USB (Universal Serial Bus)ports so you can add other devices, such as a 3G (third generationmobile telecommunications) wireless card to stay connected to theNet over mobile phone networks.

I plan to test as many mini-notebooks as possible over the next fewweeks, but I don't expect them to be too different in performancesince they nearly all use similar components, such as Intel's Atommicroprocessor.

For Wind, the 10-inch screen is one differentiating feature, as isthe 80G-byte HDD. Most rivals carry 8.9-inch screens and muchsmaller storage space, 10G bytes to 20G bytes.

Still, laptop makers are excited about this emerging product linedue to the early success of the Eee PC, and they're trying to packin more functions at low costs -- and that's where I expect to seesome of these devices outshine others. Stay tuned.