MSI Wind U110 Eco rocks ATI graphics, 9-hour battery life
By Nilay Patel 
posted Mar 16th 2009 11:11AM
posted Mar 16th 2009 11:11AM
[Via Engadget Spanish; thanks TheLostSwede]
posted Mar 16th 2009 11:11AM
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Is this the 9 hour battery that lasts 4-5? That battery? You know, the like the MBP 8 hour battery which does NOT last that long unless you do just about.....nothing on your computer. We need to get a better way of rating batteries, the numbers companies spout out are meaningless it seems like
my laptop was given a 7 hour battery life with wifi off, and it gets about 7:40, so they actually underestimated it for mine... do agree that most give highly exaggerated values, but can't count them out just yet
Depends on usage.
a consumer group (perhaps set up by the government) can do independent testing of these batteries. Battery power rating seems so exaggerated these days...
You just need (a) the average battery capacity in mAh over the first 6 months of life and (b) the maximum (full bright, all devices enabled, CPU in performance mode) and minimum (screen low, no wifi, CPU on-demand) draws in Watts.
My EeePc 1000HE comes pretty close to that 9.5 hour life. About 8 I'd say, and that's with leaving WiFi on all day and the screen still at 50% brightness, which is plenty.
Actually AMD just recently stated the exact same thing. That their needs to be a better rating system with various times based on usage. Such as average battery life for watching movie, listen to music, browsing, working on word doc., etc.
Intel as usual, were being dicks about this and just said in so many words, "We don't make the laptops, just the chips, so AMD should shut up. *raspberry*." Intel really cares about its customers.
My Macbook Pro gets close to 8 hours with wifi on and streaming audio while doing normal tasks (i.e. internet, email, photoshop, excel, and occasional videos). I'm sure it lasts less than 8 hours if I was playing a 3D game.
My Asus 1000He also gets over 7 hours of battery life (battery saver mode) while being on wifi with internet explorer and aim.
I've used other laptops in the past before with long lasting battery claims, and none of them had ever performed significantly worse than advertised. However, my gaming laptops and others with rated 2-3 hours battery life can never even achieve 1.5 hours, and that's without playing any games.
So it seems like if the manufacturer emphasizes good battery life, that's what you'll get. If battery life is an afterthought, even the crappy 2 hour life in their specs is optimistic.
Wow 9 hours of battery life! I hope it's not the same thing as "8 hours" of battery life for a Macbook 17". We all know how well that worked out.
But will it blend? That is the question.
*Yawn*
450$ and I will buy!
Hmm, this is interesting. The HD3200 is a pretty decent integrated graphics solution. I have it's brother, the 3100, in my laptop and I'm able to play most games with very playable frame rates at decent graphic settings. Wonder what this will do for the little bugger's HD video playback and such?
I hope MSI will put in an HDMI port, but probably not. : (
How stupid is the marketing team when they approve a picture that says "notebook", while they state that this is a "netbook"?!
Well, if you say "notebook" with a kind of Australian nasal draw, it sounds like "netbook". But seriously, I think they are just aware that certain people are being sued for trademark infringement by the owners the netbook(tm) trademark. Never saw Asus use the term "netbook" either.
9 hours is not so amazing any more. My Eee 1000 gets 7 hours with the stock 6.6Ah battery when I switch off wifi and dim the screen (which is how I travel anyhow). And when I put a Hong Kong 10.5mAh battery on it, I get 13 hours. That's 13 hours of real use, tested. Power consumption is down to as low as 6.5W.
This is not to say that I sneer at 9 hours - that is great. Rather, to say that 9 hours is plausible and seems in line with trends. IMO we'll be seeing power consumption down to 5W and battery densities & sizes increasing up to 10Ah, giving real 20-hour battery lives, in the next year or so.
*Snide reference to 17-inch MBP battery life, extreme reservation about accuracy of claimed battery life*
Good, now we can move on to actual comments about the hardware.
Wind is one of the first and also best selling netbooks, I have a Wind re-badged as Advent, its great apart from battery/graphics. AMD to the rescue! who would have though, I suppose we'll see more AMD netbook's sooner than we thought.
this is FANTASTIC! but:( it's not in the 1000HE's beautiful enclosure/keyboard :( But, performace of this magnitude compared to GMA950 > looks. If this is $450 or less it will be a fantastic deal, and my tax return may go to it! L2 would probably run great on that, Quake Live, maybe even Fear Combat on low.
Quake Live ? Better start queuing now it might take a few months to actually play it.
Theres no more queue issues anymore as far as I know, I've been on QL since January and have never once seen a queue :)
unlike the 1000he, this does have gigabit ethernet
no details on whether it also nudges ahead of the line with dual channel 802.11n
depending on whether this refers to the 3 cell or 6 cell version.. 9 hours is a pretty amazing feat
Of course its referring to the 6 cell battery, if it was the 3 cell battery, that would blow my mind.
I'm getting quite impressed with the Wind with this model having dedicated ATI graphics and the U115 model having SSD/HDD hybrid with up to 15 hours of battery life and 5 hours battery life minimum.
They could have 90+ hours of battery life.... but if they insist on using those crappy Sentellic trackpads on the MSI Wind, I'll continue to return that netbook and find something better.
Awesome Price + Awesome Screen + Awesome Battery + Great Keyboard + Horrible Trackpad = Crappy Netbook
Sorry, MSI. Fix that sucker!
is the HD3200/Atom Z530 combo capable of non-stuttering 1080p output from gigabit ethernet sources? That's all I'd need to know...
I'm searching for a cheap netbook that can be docked in my home theater to act as the front-end of my media solution whenever I'm at home.
I know I'm not alone...make it a touchscreen tablet as well, and I think many here would consider it the modern Holy Grail of gadgets. :)
Yes. The HD3200 has AMD's UVD, so it can do full H.264/MPEG-2/VC-1 decoding in hardware, up to Blu-ray resolutions and bitrates.
@Brian
If the benchies support that fact, then this just might become my first netbook purchase... :)
I can't use a Wind. The keypad is WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too tiny! And it is an awful keypad, to boot. I'm much happier with my Eee PC.
Not to beat the dead horse.... But seriously EEE pc has a shitty keyboard, but has a much better trackpad... This has been the trade off between the two for as long as this netbook war has existed...
Look for that right "shift" button on your EEE, for god's sake..
Netbook graphics that aren't GMA950? I'm intrigued. Make a solid-state variety, and I'm instantly sold.
(by SD slot, they DO mean SDHC, right?)
with nine hours i could possibly use this for 2 school days
also this looks pretty good