Im now a proud owner of a MSI wind :P

Lol nah , Its just an advent 4211 so a rebadged wind , still its identical , From pc world for £280, Battery life does suck though , As soon a i can buy a 6 , or even 9 cell battery im gonna.

So far ive put a new 120gb drive in the system (possible upgrade to a 320gb in the future) and an extra gig of ram , I may do a couple of mods to the system , there is a fair amount of space free underneath , Im thinking GPS , built in readyboost ,touchscreen dosnt look like an option because there isnt enough room between the screen and bezel.

No-one has really modded one of these atall yet , Should be intresting , I really need to get a 6 cell battery though current battery life is barely 2 hours.

Oh by the way , I reinstalled XP on the system (my lite version) and a shrunk vista copy so im dual booting , and currently XP is way faster/smother then vista although suprisingly vista gets better battery life by about 20 mins.

Gaming sucks pretty much , Ive managed to play a few games like GTA vice city and framerate hardly goes above 30.

So far I have void my warranty , PC world say you are fine to upgrade the system aslong as you invoke no damage.

On another note , what the hell is up with the heatsink on the atom/northbridge , its basically a thin piece of metal , Im definatly gonna replace that somtime soon , Although its prob not needed , May improve cooling and mean the fan dosnt spin up as much , therefore improving battery life.

 

And no-ones intrested?? Meh im not gonna bother posting a log of the mods then.

 

Congrats on your Wind... I bought my wife one but I ended up using it 50% of the time I basically use it all around the house streaming video and audio to it via wifi (Slingbox and Media Player) and the internet.

No plans of modding my wife's Wind... so far it could run all the apps I installed on it with no problems... Slingbox's SlingPlayer, ffdshow codecs so I can stream ripped DVDs off my main PC to it via Wifi, and FireFox 3.01 for streaming movies of the internet. I did get a Motorola S2 bluetooth headphone so I can listen to headphones without being bothered with wires.

 

what is max ram on MSI wind? can we upgrade the CPU?

 

Max RAM is 2 GB... it comes with one 1 GB module, and a spare slot which can only support up to 1 GB...

I just bought one and have a 1 GB module since I just upgraded my AW from 2 GB to 3 so I definitely plan on putting that 1 GB in my Wind when it comes.

Please let us all know how the modding goes!! I don't plan on upgrading HD, GPU, or CPU but if you get a nice GPS feature going I'd <3 to know how to do that.

 

well , I orderd a 320gb HDD and some 667mhz CL4 1gb module , And Ive got a gps Reciever on order and a usb hub on order.
I orderd this hub:
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.13232

because it dosnt have and USB ports solderd to the PCB so its perfect for modding, And ive got on order a 8GB USB pen drive (fastest I could find @ 45mbps, But will be limited to about 30 because of usb interface) and im gonna maybe load vista/XP onto it and it will act like an ssd, Because the wind can boot from USB

GPS , I wasnt sure if it would be easier to get a bluetooth GPS and put it internally , IE remove the battery pack and just run it off the Winds battery. and the connect to it through the built in bluetooth.


Anyhow , I think the 8GB SSD should run smothly I think maybe ill only put vista on it becauase the amount of un-needed disk activity by vista is crazy it will nick all my read/write cycles?? anyone know anything about this? Because its not a true SSD im gonna not get much usage of it before it needs replacing.

Anyone got any other Mod ideas i can do?? Ive got 2 ports left on my USB hub when i put it in.

There is a heck of alot of free space inside the wind.

I could do fingerprint reader??
err cant really think of much else off the top of my head.
Touchscreen is not an option because
no1 I cant find any 10.1" touchscreens
no2 there is hardly any room in the bezel so if have to do some heavy mods to the screen in order to make it fit , (unless the topuchscreen is razor thin)
and also i think touchscreens give a somwhat grainy effect to the screen and i love the screen currently , its brilliant and the brightness and white whites amaze me.
So I think my plan will be to put the hub underneath the HDD (i think it should fit) , because the bluetotoh module is there so i can use that port and thenlink the bluetooth back up to the hub again so ill get 3 spare USB ports , good idea , no??

ive got to go now anyway , going shopping at bluewater , cyaaa.

Oh and another note , Im not amazing at soldering , but i can do this quite easily because its not too hard , its the organisation inside the wind thats the problem

oh and one more thing , battery life sure does suck im either gonna mod a 9 cell like the previous guy or buy a 6 cell battery , either way im getting a new battery because i can barley get two hours right now , succckkkkss

 

Ok well keep us informed Lite! I think perhaps (at least for me) the USB idea is silly, because on an ultra-portable I won't use the 3 USB ports it already has lol...

But if you do get the GPS working somehow I'd be VERY interested because then the Wind might be a sweet little Road companion.

 

I dont think you get what the USB hub is being used for
I need a hub so i can solder it internally so i get more USB ports to connect GPS ect I cant just connect it to nothing. Its not gonna add anymore external ports atall. or any physical functionality , just allow for more internal devices.


Although If you want to get GPS without any internal hack you can simply use a Bluetooth GPS reciever , it is just a little box and connects wirelessly to your wind via bluetooth and give you GPS signals , It runs off its own battery so you can store it anywhere within bluetooth range.

 

I hope you are good at puzzles, cause there is very little room to spare inside the case, and everything is origami like on top of everything else.

 

Hm... I think perhaps an external option would be nice.