MSI S271 - Any reviews or comments?

I was hoping to get some use opinions on the S271 TurionX2. I'm contemplating purchasing this model. Anyone have any criticisms both positive and negative?

thanks

 

Also - would you offer your suggestions as to whether you would pick the W7J or the S271?

 

well, do you need dedicated graphics? then go for the w7j, other wise its a waste to go for that machine.

 

I think I could get by with the intergrated graphics... Just want to see if anyone has experience with the S271. Seems to be well priced too.

 

Hi, I have the s271. It's a good machine by all accounts.
Small, I get about 4:15 bat. life, and it's full of features.
The one downside up to now has been the fact that it freezes or gets a driver issue when I place 1 gig sticks. (1x1 gig 667) I have replaced the ram brand 3 times and I still get the same issue.
So I'm using 2x 512mb right now.

 

I'm contemplating getting this notebook but in its Sempron version (that saves me a whooping €420) but I have never worked on a subnotebook. I have seen them and played around with them but I am a little concerned over the size. My question is, can someone work long hours comfortably with such a screen size. I have good eyes (no need for glasses). I know that in this a personal opinion that matters but I would like some views on this from people who own a 12" notebook.

p.s. Apparantly the notebook will be orange, go figure.

 

There is one from laptoplogic.com

 

It's a joy to work with - this is coming form someone that's using a dual 19" setup

It's 1280x800 - same res as a 19" monitor widthwise. It's pretty sharp so you dont have to increase text size.

Only thing that was annoying for me was vnc to my main pc

The keyboard was nice - there's a little "flex" i see people talking about but not so much that you'd notice if you dont look at the keyboard.

It's stable for me running with 2 1GB dimms. I used gskill dimms from newegg.
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16820231069

I verified speed in cpu-z, it's running correctly at 640MHz (am2 speeds are based on the lowest integer divider of the cpu clock *2 that's less than memory max spd, so for 1.6 GHz, divider of 5 = 320MHz, *2 for ddr = 640 mhz, 5 being the lowest divider at which memory is within spec.

The graphics arn't that bad. I got 663 in 3dmark 05 which is close to the level of mobile 9600s. I can play dungeon siege 2 maxed, and battlefield 2 was almost smooth enough at minimum settings. Quake 3 is a blast on it at native res, halo at 640 is smooth, half life 2 is somewhat playable at native, best at 800x600. It's ok for gaming, but definitely not heavy gaming. Quake 4 was not playable no matter what I tried. If you want gaming, get the w7j.

I'd say I get about 3:15 to 3:30 using it normally. It got me 2 hours or so playing dungeon siege 2 and still had some juice left.


Adding ram was a pain. you remove almost all the bloody screws to remove the top and bottom panels, and raise the keyboard, raise some foil like layer, and insert your dimms.

I noticed that WEP seems to freeze the notebook, but WPA/WPA2 was just fine. Right now because i'm using my ds, I use an open AP with mac filtering to make life easy.

I guess I would have preferred the w7j, though this is cool enough to use on my bare lap for hours, and it cost me less.

I ordered it from ava-direct.com. My advice is the moment you get it, reformat it. My book was quick but wasn't stable for days on end until I formatted it myself. Now it runs for weeks and it's perfectly fine.


NOTE - the ATI chipset was known to have usb performance issues, but I havent had problems using my usb harddrive. Seems to copy files as fast as my 945 chipset pc (so at least it's throughput is greater than that of the drive).

 

Thanks beomagi... lots of good info there...