What can we learn from this MSI Wind video review from our friends in Denmark?
Thanks to Charbax for sending this in. Enjoy!
MSI, most recently reviled by us for essentially pulling a bait-and-switch earlier this month, is perhaps hoping to regain some of the credibility it lost when it raised the price of its tiny notebook by $50 after the fact. Quick, kiss some babies!
Recognizing our corporate social responsibility, MSI Notebook is taking the initiative to launch the “Love with the Wind” global charity program. This will take the form of charity donations in Taiwan, China, Poland, Ukraine, Turkey, Russia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Korea and India to give poor children a chance to learn how to use computers.
Sounds good to me, charity is always nice, but considering the level of responsibility they demonstrated earlier, I’d like to take a good look at just how much of my purchase is going towards actually helping needy children. Call me cynical, but I do occasionally question corporations’ motives when they make moves like these.
If you’re not yet turned off by MSI’s recent price hikes or you have a three-cell version of the Wind already, a post over in the MSI Wind Forums details how to turn the small-ish three-cell battery into a whopping nine-cell battery.
It looks relatively easy if you’re really determined, although I’d likely not attempt anything that involved slicing the battery open with a box cutter. Finding the extra six cells to add to the standard three cells might be a bit difficult, too, as the forum poster simply says that he was able to “get a source of the same batteries that are in the Wind” but doesn’t detail how the rest of us could get our hands on those batteries.
If you’re the daring type, though, here’s a brief overview of the process.
Oh wow. Wow. This is a really odd decision. MSI has raised the prices of its Wind notebook (see our review here) from $479 to $499 for a version with Windows XP and a three-cell battery and from $499 to $549 for the version with XP and a six-cell battery. An MSI rep told Laptop the following:
“Since the cost of the battery and materials raise (sp), we had no choice but adjust the MSRP to $499.99 with 3-cell battery and $549.99 with 6-cell.”
To make matters worse, some retailers are hiking the price of the six-cell version up as high as $599. And – AND! – if that’s not enough, apparently some pending retail orders are being canceled because MSI now wants to sell them at the higher price.
As I was preparing my review of the MSI Wind earlier today, I noticed that MSI’s product site pulled the notebook down for a bit. It’s back up, but I see that the six-cell battery version of the MSI Wind has been delayed until August now. Last time we reported, it’d been delayed until July. Looks like the battery shortage caused by the fire at the LG plant back in March is still causing some pretty serious delays.
The three-cell version of the Wind has been released and is available (if you can find one in stock) for $479 — $20 cheaper than the six-cell version.
UPDATE: Now the six-cell version has been pushed out from July to August to September. Just got the following…
CITY OF INDUSTRY, CA – July 8, 2008 – MSI Computer, a leading manufacturer of computer hardware products and solutions, has begun shipping all the pre-ordered Wind U100 notebooks. The Wind, with its speedy new Intel Atom™ 1.6GHz processor, is also on sale at Fry’s and online at www.newegg.com, www.amazon.com, www.frys.com, www.zipzoomfly.com, www.mwave.com, and www.buy.com. These first notebooks sold will feature Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition and a 3-cell battery.
In September, MSI will begin selling a Windows version of the Wind with a 6-cell battery , as well as the Linux version with a 3-cell battery. MSI will also carry a 6-cell battery for customers who wish to upgrade their 3-cell battery in late September.
So the preordered three-cell units should be shipping out now. That’s good. But the six-cell version keeps getting delayed again and again. Let’s hope September’s the latest it’ll get delayed. People holding out for the six-cell version aren’t going to be too thrilled with this news.
For those of you looking for a reason NOT to buy the MSI Wind, I can’t really give you a good one. It’s a great little machine. Go ahead and buy one if you’ve been waiting. For everyone else, read on for the pros and cons of this aggressively-priced, yet impressively-performing netbook.
MSI’s Wind desktops will launch in Asia and Europe this summer – expect them in about two months – and there are no current plans to launch it in the US. The desktop will run Atom. It will not, however, get you women like the one pictured. In fact, purchasing a pink Wind mini-desktop is as far from sexy as you can get without becoming a eunuch.
Not much info right now, but it should cost between $199 and $299.
I’ve been using the MSI Wind and for a little while now and have checked out a handful of things that our readers have asked about. I’ll have a full review of the notebook itself coming up soon but in the meantime, I’ve tested the following:
Skype video recording and playback, HD video playback (WMVHD and AVCHD), Photoshop, Google Earth, StarCraft, Ubuntu 8.04, DVD playback with a mounted .iso image using DAEMON Tools, and more. Thanks for all the great questions, everyone…
The MSI Wind has been delayed by a couple weeks. It was supposed to be available yesterday, and now MSI’s site pegs the shipping date at June 27th. I suppose that’s not the end of the world, but what’s pretty disappointing is that the Wind will now ship with only a three-cell battery instead of a six-cell battery thanks to supply shortages.
I’ve been playing around with the Wind for the past few days and I can tell you that a three-cell battery would certainly make the unit more svelte, but the six-cell battery easily blasted through 4+ hours of world-famous CrunchGear blogging from the couch yesterday while watching Tiger and Rocco duke it out for the US Open title.
It should be noted that the price of the Wind has dropped from $499 to $479 for the Windows XP version. You could always add the six-cell battery later, although I bet it’ll cost you a fat wad more than $20.
UPDATE: Just got this from MSI’s PR rep. The previously-equipped six-cell version will apparently be available in July for $499.99 – so if you can’t wait, you can pick up a three-cell version on June 27th for $479.99 or get the six-cell version next month.
“You are correct that MSI will ship a XP version of the Wind with a 3-cell battery on 6/27 for $479.99. However, they still plan to ship an XP version with a 6-cell battery for $499, but delayed that until July. The reason was the industry wide battery shortage, MSI felt they needed to get something in their customers’ hands now rather than wait a full month.”
MSI Wind Product Page [msicomputer.com] via Boing Boing Gadgets
What’s $499 and runs Windows XP Home with a 1.6GHz Atom processor? Why the MSI Wind, of course! It should be available in June (a Linux version drops for $399 in July) and will definitely give the ultralight Asus eee a run for its money.
CNET’s UK office got a special hands-on with the forthcoming MSI Wind notebook and they like it so much that they said it “could take the throne from the Asus Eee PC as the best mini laptop on the planet.” The 10-inch screen is apparently better than the one on HP’s Mini-Note 2133, and the overall design aesthetic and keyboard on the Wind is better than the Eee but not quite as nice as the Mini-Note.
One really cool feature is that the CPU can be overclocked by about 20% by hitting Fn + F10, which kicks MSI’s “TurboDrive Engine” into gear. More photos after the jump.
Umm… I’m going to try to be professional here and not make a joke out of MSI’s motto “Ride the Wind.” What you see here is a little PC running MS-7314 Wind motherboard running… ummm… boobs.
It is Energy Star compliant, plays back 720p video and is very small and might be nice to take out for noodles and then maybe take back to your hotel bar and maybe talk for a little while and maybe see again later, right? You had a nice time, right? You’ll call me?
MSI is coming out swinging against you-know-who with the US to be the first place the company’s Wind notebook will be released. IDG News Service is reporting that…
“The U.S. edition of Wind will come in two different versions, one for US$549 running Microsoft’s Windows XP. A few things set Wind apart from competitors, including the 1.6GHz Atom microprocessor, larger screen size and a six-cell battery that gives it around six hours of power. Wind also carries an 80G-byte hard disk drive (HDD) instead of a flash memory-based Solid State Drive (SSD)…
…The other version of Wind will use Novell’s SUSE Linux OS and cost $399. The Linux device shares the same screen size, HDD and microprocessor as the XP device. But it carries a three-cell battery that allows only around 2.5 hours of power and does not offer wireless data transfer using Bluetooth, which the XP device does. The Linux version also comes with less DRAM (dynamic RAM), 512M-bytes versus 1G-byte for the XP laptop.”
Of note is that both versions will have a 10-inch screen and the 8.9-inch version won’t be sold here, only abroad. Here are more specs, from a post we did last week.
That $549 version looks mighty enticing to a guy like me, especially the six-hour battery life. The launch date remains “sometime in June” — hopefully soon.
Just reading the stats on this, it looks like MSI’s subnotebook, the Wind (unrelated to the Air) is possibly the best value for a computer on the market today. Check it out, for about $500 you get all this: 10″ LCD, 80GB HDD, a gig of RAM, 1.3MP webcam, 5 hour battery life, weighs in at 2.6lb and built around Intel’s new Atom processor. I don’t usually just plug stuff like this, but it really looks like a great power-to-dollar ratio you’re getting here, and MSI is a good brand. You can even choose Linux instead of XP, though your hardware choices are more limited. MSI US’s manager says:
We designed the Wind to offer mobile consumers all the features of bulkier more expensive notebooks, but with a sleeker lightweight footprint and an affordable sub $500 price point.
Sounds like the usual PR nonsense, but I think they might have actually done it. Keep an eye on MSI Mobile’s site for more details.
TweakTown has some more details about MSI’s upcoming Wind notebook, one of the latest in the line of Asus Eee competitors. So far, the specs look pretty good and the relatively large 10-inch screen and 12-inch wide keyboard are welcome additions.
Just to reiterate how I feel about June, 2008 one more time; it’s gonna be sweet. That’s the month that tiny Eee-like notebooks will be coming out of the woodwork from manufacturers the world over. Now MSI joins the party with the “Wind,” a 2.2-pound notebook that comes in 8.9-inch or 10-inch flavors at 1024×600 resolution, 80GB hard drive, 1GB RAM, Windows XP, and — get this — seven hours of battery life. I’ll believe that when I see it (I’d love to see it, too).
It’ll hit Europe in June for between €299 and €699 (about $471 to $1100), depending on the configuration. Not sure if we’ll see it here in the US, unfortunately.
via Pocket-lint
