While the original Wind U100 has
stooped below $350 in many shops, the upgraded version -- complete with a 160GB hard drive and a much needed 6-cell battery -- is currently going for around $420. The PC abusers over at
HotHardware managed to get this slab onto their testing bench, and test they did. After applying the recently released
v1.09 BIOS, which enables press-of-a-button overclocking, they found that it worked remarkably well. In fact, they noted that this feature alone placed the Wind a step above its rivals for those who appreciate even minor increases in speed. They even went so far as to benchmark the OC'd machine against a standard U100 and a few other competitors, but we won't ruin the surprise by blurting out the results here. Have a gander at the read link for more, but don't blame us if you come away with an unexpected urge to buy a
netbook.
posted Jan 6th 2009 4:33AM
Whoo hoo - the super slow atom just got a bumb up to slow.
When you've got any idea what you'te actually talking about come back and then someone might consider you're stupidity in this comment.
My sister got Aspire One - it can't even handle anime correctly, stuttering while playing movies both off USB drive and off HDD. Didn't try to put it into "performance" mode though, but there are problems trying to play 720p movie while working off the battery. The movie freezes from time to time. So I think any performance bump would be great for these little things.
Other than that those little things are great. Especially considering how much more you can do with them compared to Sony Ericsson Xperia X1, which is two (three?) times more expensive...
Use mpc home cinema and coreavc for avc files.
@Shinigami
Netbook is for Net surfing and is a portable computer, between a notebook and a smartphone. Its only meant for internet surfing, mails, RSS and chatting & VoIP (Skype)... Not for processor intense work. You cant expect to play NFS Underground on it for work with Maya for graphic intensive process.
If you want to watch videos, get a good notebook for a mini PC like Mac mini and hook it up to a LCD display !!
I just bought one of these. The 6-cell battery on the device is 4400 mAh, and not 5200 mAh. I hear there are two types out there. The 4400 mAh battery holds for 3 hours 45 minutes in my case, wifi on, bluetooth on and me surfing on the internet.
I will buy HP Mini 2 series(10 inch screen) instead, about 120USD more, I can get a better look and metallic body.
This thing is pure plastic.
Agreed, you pay for looks..i should know...i buy Macs.
The Hp Minis are 10 times better than most others out there. They actually look like notebooks worthy for adult use rather than for the under 10s.
I will be buying a 1000
plastic is light! weight is important.
@Boards of Canada
Not if you're a MAN! xD
I always carry my 3kg laptop together with chargers, camera and lots of other stuff in my backpack when I go anywhere. So there shouldn't be a problem with 100g from metal casing in a lappie.
The Atom is slow?
Here is a performance video I did with a stock MSI Wind running 10.5.4 on the 1.06 bios, performance seems fine to me.
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=g949nqXQrsU
Heres a link to the current install kit, I sold my wind awhile back - but for anyone picking one up, heres the deetz.
http://pcwizcomputer.com/weaksauce12/?p=532
Bet you moved your hands very slowly and edited at 2x speed!!
hehe... really nice setup man. Way more portable than a air if you ask me!
I have a U100 + upgraded bios + 6 cell. I use it regulary for outdoor work and I would recommend these upgrades.
The battery did make the computer a little bulkier, these additions does make the netbook a lot faster, and the battery would last at least 4 hours.
Although not relevant to this article: the keyboard for me is the major draw-back to this unit... they've shrinked the three symbol keys (/, , and .) into the size of two keys, which makes it very inconvenient for fast typing.
The location of the Ctrl-key sucks as well.
mackster@ http://forums.msiwind.net/internal-hardware/bios-10a-ctrl-keyswap-any-interest-t6778.html
@ggfgf :
Thanks for the trick but I'll pass for now, hacking the BIOS is risky business.
Again European customers are getting screwed with insanely high prices. This thing currently costs €400 in Germany, which equals about $540 :(
yah..
for some weird reason have marketing and sales people gotten the idea that one US Dollar equals one Euro, which by the way is blatantly wrong btw, and they actually believe it is fair pricing and some of those companies even forces their customers to pay in Euro with European Union VAT added on top of that when the paying customer isn't in a EU member country and not even eligible for paying any taxes.
1$ ≠ 1€
1$ ≤ 1€
Yay for sticker fest on laptop!!!
MSI wind U100 have been an excellent netbook as compare to others.
With overclock features up to 24%, none of the netbook out there is able to beat that feature.
Wind benefits from the sleek and clean design, and battery life (which i got 5200mAh 6 Cells ) last me up to 4 plus hours for regular online surfing.
it cost 699SGD$ (470 USD) for a 6 cell, Wireless-N, 2GB Ram one.
So cost weise, it's some saving for me :)
I have one to running 10.5.6 and it runs beautifully. Also the latest bios is 1.00A or 1.10A i can't remember it is not 1.09. Also when your on battery it can underclock to get you amazing batterylife. I used To be all for big bulky laptops with high performence but I found my self nwver using it hen i had my piwer house desktop sitting right next to it. Bought my wind and put osx on it and slaped an apple sticker that came with my phone and sold my other laptop. I use my wind more than my desktop for school aswell. The wind is an ezcellent product.
It really is , moreover nobody mentioned that even if you bought a first edition MSI wind, with remarkably little expense you can pimp it up to become just like this newer edition.
I also have a Vaio TT but apart for the integrated optic drive I can't see much difference between it and the (pimped up) Wind; even the Tt's better graphics are not very noticeable on 10/11 inches screens.
As for looks I bought a rebranded white Wind and then I bought one of those adesive covers made just for the wind (mine shows a famous Roy Lichtestein pop art masterpiece) and it transformed my nettop in real eye catcher, sure much more beautiful and original than anything HP sells filled with crapware.
I'm ready to bet that practically all of those who criticize this machine never had the chance to to try it for more than a few minutes (if at all)
I think it needs more stickers.
I've got an MSI Wind U90, bought for C$359 last fall and love it. I installed msiwindosx86 (10.5.4) on it and it runs great, but I have yet to upgrade the BIOS.
Does anyone know if it's "safe" to upgrade the BIOS to 1.09 (1.10?) without affecting the OS X install?
I'd suggest to bunk the BIOS upgrade. If its running fine, let it run. I have seen people screwing the OS installation by figiting with the BIOS and then re-installing the OS.
You could however, head to insanelymac.com and take advice.
I've got the 1.10a BIOS. I see the option to overclock in the BIOS, so I can set it there.
When I hit fn F10 - there's no visual indication of BIOS overclocking. How can I tell what the overclocking is set to?
Got one of these for Christmas. Ordered a 7200 RPM 320 Gb and 1 Gb of DDR2 667 Mhz (4-4-4-12 timing VERY important for the overclocking feature to properly work as that's the timing for the soldered on 1 Gb) from Newegg for $100. Installed Vista on it, which gives a slight increase in performance and battery life over XP, and I LOVE it. The only thing it can't do that I'll miss is play HD video on Hulu and Youtube (not "high quality" but specifically HD)
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4505 (article on Vista vs XP)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231129 (correct RAM if you're interested, 667 Mhz 4-4-4-12 timing RAM is somewhat rare)
Don't even bother unless you get the 6 cell battery, getting 5.5 hours with heavy use is AWESOME.
"In fact, they noted that this feature alone placed the Wind a step above its rivals for those who appreciate even minor increases in speed."
Ah right, cause some of the Eee PC models didn't have this function built in since their release. They only go to 1.8ghz so the Wind has a nice 200mhz advantage there, though with certain models that don't have the over/underclocking button built in, people have been overclocking the chips via custom software up to 2.1-2.2ghz.
"They even went so far as to benchmark the OC'd machine against a standard U100 and a few other competitors."
Besides the near-uselessness of the benchmark (all netbooks were using the same exact chip and chipset), they tested the MSI Wind at stock and at 2ghz, but they left the Eee 1000H only at stock when it also has an overlock function built in. Also, if they're worried about getting the max performance from a netbook, they should have benched the softmodded Eee PC models that allow for up to 2.2ghz overclock.
I have nothing against the Wind, I think it's a well designed little netbook, but this article seems a bit one sided to me.
I recently decided against getting this netbook because the FN key is in the bottom left corner, instead of control. I never understood this.
Not sure how this is news. I have a Wind U100 that shipped with 6 cell battery, bluetooth, wireless N, 160GB HDD for $350 before Thanksgiving.
Overclocked with OS X and Windows.
Can you provide a link for the purchase site?
Does it still have the stupid single button rocker for a mouse button?
Ive been running my Wind over clocked to 2.0ghz for a while now. It runs quite nicely, and theres only a slight differance in battery life (like 35minutes, which is alot for my 3cell, but not to bad if you have a 6cell.)
Tired of these stupid benchmarks. These are netbooks. Time the boot time, hibernate, resume, & time to launch firefox with a stop watch please. That's all I care about!
Well said!