Chilean MSI wind gets in-depth hands-on

If you needed evidence of the popularity of cheap ultraportables in foreign lands, the news leading up to the release of the MSI Wind should be a good indicator. Last month it was a Turkish video of the thing, now it's a detailed Chilean writeup of a pre-release model. We're relying on Google Translate to parse out the details here, but from what we can understand the article indicates the keyboard to be "sufficiently comfortable," the LED-backlit screen impressive, and the performance in XP to be quite good. This despite a glitch that left the Intel Atom processor gimped short of its 1600MHz maximum speed, which will surely (hopefully) rectified before the 10-inch model finds release here next month at $549 with XP and a 6-cell battery, or SuSE flavored (and smaller batteried) for just $399.

[schmitty338 @ May 16th 2008 1:23PM]

Before anybody suggests otherwise, 'batteried" is a perfectly cromulent word....

[Bender123 @ May 16th 2008 1:38PM]

This laptop embiggens the soul. No questions axed.

[Drew @ May 16th 2008 2:46PM]

I hope this thing comes all Batteried up, cause I gots to unbox it as soon as I gets home!

[Justin @ May 16th 2008 1:24PM]

WANT.

[Blaine Oliver @ May 16th 2008 4:08PM]

I want one also, i want one for my 6th form (last 2 years of school, non optional) Would be useful, if priced lower than EEE 901, i want good battery life and small and cheap, and decent screen, apart from that i dont care SSD or anything, cheap and portable are the main features that EEE and all other LCUP (low cost ultra portable) laptops need to retain.

[fontendet24 @ May 16th 2008 6:55PM]

This laptop reminds me Apple iBook 12'' - my first and best notebook, that i've used.
I'll get it right now if it will be with Mac OS X...
With Windows XP - i'm not decided...

[Flashpoint @ May 16th 2008 1:27PM]

I don't see anything wrong with releasing gigahertz CPU's with Windows XP so long as they have decent HDD and decent RAM.

I have foreign students who can't afford laptops i'd recommend such as the HP DV series so its good to be getting options, even if they are the so called "race to the bottom"

[Ignatius @ May 16th 2008 1:33PM]

I remember an article on Tom's Hardware (IIRC) that had them installing Windows XP on every system they possibly could. It actually installed onto a 386 with only 1MB of RAM... it wouldn't run for beans, but Windows XP is just such a flexible OS when it comes to hardware.

[HighTeckRedNeck @ May 19th 2008 10:01AM]

It appears to be a full 1600Mhz Atom. Google doesn't translate this page well for some reason. The performance glitch is not a hardware problem, but an issue with Intel Speedstep. Like any other Intel laptop, the best approach is probably to disable Speedstep and use third-party software to manage your cpu speed.

[Ignatius @ May 16th 2008 1:28PM]

Fail!

[Esat Dedezade @ May 16th 2008 4:57PM]

Yes.

Yes you did.

[Ignatius @ May 16th 2008 4:59PM]

Lawl, they deleted the guy's "first!" post.

[IT-Accountant @ May 16th 2008 1:32PM]

I'm glad to hear that the keyboard was comfortable, I'm seriously thinking of picking one of these puppies up when they come out, and that was my most major remaining concern.

[rock99rock @ May 16th 2008 1:35PM]

Any performance of xp should be considered "good" after 2 fingers of a nice scotch. The real question, is how good is it after the bottle?

[PEZ @ May 16th 2008 7:04PM]

Better looking than you after 2 bottles.

[rock99rock @ May 17th 2008 2:41PM]

Yea well your mom goes to college.

[zunq @ May 16th 2008 1:39PM]

I so wish it had WXGA resolution, but at this price I cannot complain at all.

[Jon Doe. @ May 16th 2008 1:43PM]

They should have come out with 4 models....
MSI Wind (Base system)
MSI Earth (Better CPU)
MSI Fire (Better graphics card)
MSI Water (Better, higher res screen)..When you combine them they form...The Avatar....and one hell of a heavy laptop.

[Rex @ May 16th 2008 2:05PM]

hate to spoil the fun, but actually you are mixing avatar and captain planet ;-)
BTW what's with the trend of simpler, less powered computers? (like the Eee and now this?)

[John Stracke @ May 16th 2008 2:07PM]

I'd rather have the MSI Waterproof.

[initialxy @ May 16th 2008 2:14PM]

but there is gonna be only one avatar per generation. and he will be hunted down by fire. then he loses his avatar state near the end because fire struck him in the back.

oops, did i spoil the story too much?

[rektide @ May 16th 2008 3:31PM]

You forgot Heart. Laptop comes with a dog whistle.

[ItsTheOMGShow @ May 16th 2008 1:46PM]

Good God, Flashpoint has students??

[Ameen @ May 16th 2008 1:51PM]

LOL!!! Flashpoint would've meant "I have seen", or something like that..

Nevertheless, its Fucking hillarious...

[Hellios @ May 16th 2008 1:47PM]

Is it too hard to ask for a SuSE version with a 6 cell battery?

Anyway it looks awesome, except for all the fan openings on its left side, and I love that the keyboard extends right to the edges.

Is the ram upgradeable?

[coffee @ May 16th 2008 1:58PM]

from what I've read, there's a single slot ddr2 available. I assume the 512mb in the Suse system is hardwired, so that slot is open, not sure about the XP version.

Anyway, best translation I've seen so far for Google, it was actually readable for the most part, and the pictures were great. Looking forward to this one.

[Matt @ May 16th 2008 4:42PM]

Agrees, the small battery is a deal-breaker. I'll be OK if I can get the 6-cell for $50, though.

[Ameen @ May 16th 2008 1:49PM]

Well, if the 10' Eee PC (Linux) version ends up around say - $500, people would most probably buy that.. Reason: It has a freaking SSD, which makes it have more value for money.. And the stand on this thing could be a deal breaker, Wont fit into back-packs and stuff.. Its a small design flaw, but it could play a big factor in selecting an ULCP (Ultra Low Cost Portable)..

Bring it on!! Eee PC Vs MSI Wind! Gotta be one helluva brawl.. Competition is good, the Wind may force the Eee PC to lower its asking price a lil' later..

[Blaine Oliver @ May 16th 2008 1:55PM]

First to comment, last to get a girlfriend...

[Superevil @ May 16th 2008 1:57PM]

Douche!

[Superevil @ May 16th 2008 2:04PM]

At first I didn't really care about the Wind but since it's taking forever for the G10IL to come out I may get this but I'll be throwing Ubuntu on there instead of using SuSE

[slarity @ May 16th 2008 2:16PM]

Im still saying this is the best ultraportable to come out (sans mb air, which I dunno crap about and dont care)

[Farris @ May 16th 2008 2:18PM]

Gay!

GAAAYYYYYYYY!!!!!!

(just saw the Collegehumor video for the first time the other day! :D )

[Weeze-dog @ May 16th 2008 2:19PM]

If memory serves, if Power Management was set to Max Battery, then the CPU would not run at full speed even under load. It would run at the speed-step limited speed. Since it was a review model, my guess is that is was set for max battery for testing, and they probably would not have known to change it back to Balanced.

[silverblackvoid @ May 16th 2008 2:19PM]

yeah dude, you're the first to post. so WTF???

[Scott Culp @ May 16th 2008 2:27PM]

This should knock the *Wind* out of Asus's sails a bit.

Can't wait to see what the next round brings. Maybe we'll get down to those mythical prices originally announced for the Eepc. (only a year late)

[sinjinn @ May 16th 2008 2:47PM]

eeepc is dead , long live the msi wind.

[OneLove @ May 16th 2008 2:47PM]

The wind is much prettier than the eee pc. Why do they call the eee pc "eea"?

[Cal @ May 16th 2008 6:52PM]

They don't, but google thinks 'Eee' is Spanish for 'EEA'

[tuxcayc @ May 16th 2008 9:30PM]

Bien por CHW.net =D

The MSI Wind is far better than EEE to me, but we've just got to wait the official release, and some pretty good benchmarks.

Bye

[Ryan @ May 16th 2008 2:57PM]

@one love

That's just how it is referred to in a number of foreign countries.

[Ryan @ May 16th 2008 3:01PM]

Ugh, all I want is an SSD in the Wind and I'm set. The only reason I'm considering an Eee over the Wind is the freakin' SSD.

[Danny @ May 16th 2008 3:11PM]

I may be mistaken, but I recall reading an article that said there actually would be an SSD option. It would apparently also lengthen battery life on it as well versus the standard hard disk option.

I'd have to agree with another poster above. If the ECS G10IL doesn't release anytime soon, I think this is the route to go in terms of ultra-portable laptops. I'm a bit disappointed there hasn't been any news trickling in on the unit, because I'm pretty excited for the HSDPA feature in it since I'll be in Hong Kong for the next few years and 3G being cheap and affordable there.

[philip @ May 16th 2008 3:39PM]

Other than SSD (which brings better battery life and more durability) my wish for the Wind is a higher resolution screen. The HP 2133 is everything I want except for the underpowered CPU and the Wind has everything I want other than the fairly average screen resolution of 1024x600.

[Brandson @ May 16th 2008 5:04PM]

I might be wrong, but I think the Wind has a standard SATA connector so you can easily replace the internal HD with a larger one or an SSD drive if you wanted to. As far as I know, the SSD memory in the Eee PC is fixed. I'd rather have the option to upgrade. A Wind with an upgraded 320GB hd sounds like a handy laptop for traveling or regularly taking to work.

I'd be interested in HP's Mininote too, if it came with XP instead of Vista.

[Ninjakamster (PSN: Chin-Poh) @ May 16th 2008 3:31PM]

Only thing I need to know before I'm sold on this is the CPU.

Many seem excited over the Atom, but I'd like to know its benchmarks vs other processors. I hear it didn't do well against the 900mhz Celeron in the EEE, but I think it was a gimped model or something?

I'm used to Intel's ULV processors, so I was hoping to see maybe a Core Solo ULV in this.

Though I hear Atoms are much cheaper. I think Atoms have quite low L2 cache?

[Matt @ May 16th 2008 4:50PM]

I hear they also only do in-order execution, although a good optimizing compiler should be able to mitigate the slowdown somewhat.

[Matt @ May 16th 2008 5:09PM]

http://www.hothardware.com/Articles/Intels_UltraPortable_Atom_Unveiled/?page=2
Seems like a good article on the Atom, if you haven't read about it yet.

[philip @ May 16th 2008 3:41PM]

"(just saw the Collegehumor video for the first time the other day! :D )"

PWND!

[nikescar @ May 16th 2008 4:18PM]

I don't get the hype surrounding these sub-notebooks. Considering the sub-performance when compared to the $520 Dell Vostro notebook I just bought I can't imagine paying more money for less performance. The size difference isn't enough to do it for me. You still have to carry these things in laptop bags just like a 13" or 15" notebook. I just don't get it.