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MSI's Windows 7-based WindPad 100W now on sale for $710
MSI's first entry into the wild, wonderful, and oftentimes wishy-washy world of tablets is now on sale, but frankly, we aren't too sure we'd be jumping to hand over our $710 -- er, $709.95 -- for the WindPad 100W. The retailer is Simply Electronics, which just so happens to rank a few rungs below Amazon in terms of heardability-ness. At any rate, those willing to take a flying leap of faith should expect a 10.1-inch device loaded up with Windows 7 Starter, Intel's Atom Z530 1.6GHz single-core processor, 2GB of memory a 32GB SSD and a battery that'll keep things humming for around six hours. Here's hoping it'll perform better than that first wave of Win7 tablets, and you know, that you actually receive one.
MSI shows off tablet concept with an integrated projector
We're not sure how we missed this concept tablet at CES a few weeks ago -- oh right, there were over 40 something tablets hanging around! -- but MSI's projector-equipped Windows 7 slate sure is an interesting one. Yep, in addition to its crazy Butterfly and Angelow all-in-ones, MSI cobbled together a rather chunky, Atom-powered, 10-inch tablet with a built-in swivel projector. We don't have any details on the projector itself -- no lumens or resolution -- but according to Notebook Italia, it can be maneuvered to display on a wall or even flipped around to project downward onto a table. A MSI rep implied that the latter function could be used to enable some sort of laser projected keyboard (we're imagining it to be a lot like this one from Light Blue Optics), but there's no actual software in place for that yet. That seems to be a popular feature in concepts these days (see Mozilla's amazing Seabird) -- now just give us the real thing! Hit the source link for a few more shots of MSI's tablet / projector contraption. Updated: Our friends at NetbookNews spotted a video of the concept tablet on TBreak. As you'd expect this looks like one unfinished product, but hit the break to check it out for yourself.
MSI WindPad 100W and 100A tablets hit CES 2011, we go hands-on
The more things change, the more they stay the same at MSI, as the company's two tablets -- due to ship within three months -- still feel like early prototypes. MSI showed off both its Windows 7 and Android 10-inch slates at CES 2011, now known as the WindPad 100W and WindPad 100A, and both sport last-gen tablet specs. Despite pitching the Windows device as an Oak Trail device, the WindPad 100W's still got a 1.66GHz Atom Menlow Z530 CPU here, and Windows 7 is seriously laggy and unresponsive despite the presence of a 32GB SSD and 2GB of RAM. Though it have the promised HDMI port, it's basically the same device we saw in May of last year. Meanwhile, the WindPad 100A (nee WindPad 110) has indeed had a redesign, but possibly for the worse -- it presently only has a single physical key pulling double-duty as Back and Power, and MSI's no longer listing Tegra 2, just a ARM Cortex A8 chip from an undisclosed vendor. It's actually got a fairly useful custom skin on top to display icons at proper tablet resolution and quickly swap between multimedia, the full Android Market, and a full 1GB of RAM, but the device wasn't anything special otherwise. If you ask us, an Android 2.2 tablet with these specs is going to be a hard sell in a post-CES 2011 world. Still, it's always possible MSI could pull things together at the last minute and surprise us. PR after the break. %Gallery-113329%
