MSI Wind U100 Review Part 1

Since late 2007, the world’s prominent notebook manufactures began shipping their ultra mobile version of a stripped down notebook, which keeps the fundamental functions of a notebook while slicing all extra not so useful features to keep it simple to build, easy to use, light to carry around, and energy optimized to achieve longer battery life.

ASUS was the first to release such products, named Eee PC, which now had already three generations. HP, DELL, Acer, MSI, and possibly every other power contenders in notebook market had released or will release a kind of product of the same type.

Eee PC is the first one released to market, and of course became the one receiving the most attention from all customers around the world. It has elegant design, small factor form, long battery life, moderate performance, and SDD drive that can free the users to use this petit notebook in any way they desire.

Success as Eee PC was, critics also surfed around since the beginning of the shipment. Relatively poor performance, the lacking of mature operating system, the scarce storage space, the low speed rate of the SSD it used, and most importantly the small screen that people resented. ASUS is quick in responding to customers’ feedback with providing its prompt upgrade to its Eee PC, making it equipped with a bigger screen, a larger while somewhat quicker SSD, and a Microsoft Windows XP Home OS. As ASUS perfecting its Eee series, other vendors got enough time to ready their own product lines. At the time of ASUS’s Eee PC got initially criticized, HP released their counterpart containing almost everything Eee PC lacked. This flattered the heat of such a somewhat niche market in traditional views.

Not only notebook vendors had the highlight in mind about the future trend, industry leader Intel also get intrigued by such a small fashion, and devoted a lot, if not very huge, effort to a extent that they even formed a team to specifically design a platform plus CPU for these mini notebooks. And they did make it, codenamed Silverthorne. Intel engineers managed to deliver a CPU that is power efficient [with its TDP being only 4W in single core, 8W in dual version] while being able to really perform. They released it to the market in name of Intel Atom, the very object we are to have a look at in a perspective of actual performance.

After Intel’s launch of its Atom family, notebook vendors finally found an easy way to embrace the ultra mobile computing times. Many vendors released ultra compact desktops, with of course their counterparts in mobile world.

Now we are to look into such a ultra mobile notebook from MSI, slated for release in late July this year, in name of Wind U100.

MSI had the details behind the scenes listed here.

Whatever a name such kind of computer will be granted, its expectations from end-users are many. It needs to be elegant in design, adequate in performance, enduring in battery life and compact when in carrying. Harsh yardstick to meet, have a look at how MSI blow its wind.

 

Very compact and elegant design. White as pearl. Very nice!

On the back, Wind incorporated many slots for heat dissipation, which is expected to help improve the coolness when operating. 

Standard laptop use power adapter, able to provide enough power to unleash any power. 

This is the standard battery pack, 3 cells inside.

Two USBs and a S-Video plus one 1394 interface.

One USB, Mic with Headphone slot, a VGA-in, and an Ethernet Interface.

 

Elegant Wind.

Don’t you love it?

Normal screen, utilizing none of the present popular trend, gets hugely welcomed by serious people that would spend really great amount of time on their laptops and such mini ones.

Limited to the size of page, performance of Wind will be presented in the next post.

Read the Part 2 here.

 

 

[credit belongs to Windwithme]