MSI Wind U100

Memory: 1GB DDR2Processor: 1.6GHz Atom N270Storage: 80GB hard driveOptical Drives: NoneDisplay: 10-inch TFTGraphics: Integrated Intel GMA X3100Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition

Review
Reviewed by: Denny Atkin Review Date: August 2008
You know a notebook has hit the sweet spot in design when it elicits jealous looks from owners of both full-size laptops and the tiny Asus Eee PC. In the new ultraportable laptop class, the MSI Wind U100 strikes the best balance yet between compact size, light weight, usability, and performance. Though it weighs just 2.3 pounds, the Wind has a keyboard that lets you touch-type at full speed, a screen that lets you view most Web pages without any side-scrolling, and a size and weight that will have you double-checking to make sure you remembered to put it in your backpack.
Powered by Intel's 1.6GHz Atom N270 processor, the Wind offers better performance than the early Eee PC models and HP's nice-but-pokey 2133 Mini-Note PC. The hyper-threading processor, for instance, turned in a score of 127 in Cinebench 9.5. That's on the low end of the scale for notebooks, but dramatically better than the score of 23 turned in by the HP 2133.
The Wind includes 1GB of RAM and currently ships with Windows XP Home; the company's planning a lower-cost SUSE Linux version as well. Though you can expand the RAM to 2GB, you must remove a warranty sticker to open the case. Storage comes from an 80GB hard drive—roomy compared with the flash drives used in some compact notebooks—but as with those other systems, there's no optical drive on the Wind.
The Wind's size doesn't cramp its keyboard much. At just over 10 inches, it's about a half-inch narrower than typical laptop keyboards, but the difference is so minor that touch-typists shouldn't have any problem typing at full speed. The only issue we encountered was occasionally hitting the “/” key instead of the size-reduced “.” key when we first started using the Wind, but after a day of typing that problem went away. The keyboard doesn't feel quite as sturdy as that of the HP 2133 Mini-Note PC, but its sculpted keytops are more comfortable to type on. The touchpad features a single button that you click on the left or right to simulate the appropriate button press.
The 10-inch screen, meanwhile, boasts a 1,024x600 wide-screen resolution. The Wind has basic 3D capabilities, courtesy of its Intel 945GSE chipset; you won't be playing Crysis, but the system's powerful enough to run older games with the details turned down a bit. The Sound Blaster-compatible audio is fine using the headphone jack, but the built-in speakers are poor, adding lots of distortion to the Wind's output.
Another quibble is battery life. Due to battery shortages, MSI shipped the first Wind units with a three-cell unit; a larger six-cell battery is due in August. With the three-cell unit installed, we were able to use the Wind for 2 hours and 22 minutes with Wi-Fi and power-saving enabled; the six-cell unit should almost double that time, and would push the Wind into Editor's Choice territory. (To extend the Wind's battery life, an Fn-key press can drop the CPU speed to 800MHz.)
As for connections, there are no PCMCIA or ExpressCard slots, but the Wind does sport three USB 2.0 ports, headphone and microphone jacks, an SD/SDHC slot, and a VGA connector. There's also a 10/100 network jack, as well as 802.11b/g and Bluetooth wireless.
The MSI Wind offers superb portability, but with its full-width screen, comfortable keyboard, and responsive performance, it rarely makes you feel like you're making compromises.Price (at time of review): $499