MSI Wind First Look

by Kevin O'Brien

Now that the MSI Wind has finally started to trickle out to consumers, we were finally able to get our hands on one of these for review. The Wind is another mini notebook in a field originally started by the ASUS Eee PC, but with one primary catch: It is priced well under the equivalent Eee PC. Now having a better price doesn't always mean you are going to win in any given market, but the MSI really outdid themselves and created a great mini notebook. Read on to see just how much ASUS should fear the MSI Wind.

Specifications

• 1.6GHz Intel Atom Processor
• 10" WSVGA 1024x600 LCD
• Windows XP Home Operating System
• 1GB 667MHz DDR2 Memory
• 80GB 2.5" SATA Hard Drive
• Wireless: 802.11b/g and Bluetooth 2.0
• 3-Cell 11.1v 2200mAh Battery

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Build and Design

The MSI Wind really has a great look and feel to it. The soft rounded edges coupled with the glossy texture make it easy and comfortable to grip onto, while also giving the mini notebook a very professional look. Another great aspect of the Wind is nothing appears "look at me" flashy, making it very appealing to business professionals, as well as children and teenagers alike. No chrome is found anywhere, and all the labeling and branding is a light grey which really goes well with the pearl white finish.

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Build quality is excellent, and reminds me very much of the HP Mini-Note. Fit and finish is top notch with smooth and tight plastic seams, beveled edges, recessed hinges, and plenty of touches here and there that make you feel you are getting every pennies worth of notebook from MSI. The quality of the plastics used is top notch, and most thick enough to prevent flex even under a firm grip. The LCD cover and palmrest show no flex under heavy pressure, but the bottom panel is thin in a few spots and easy to bend. Not a deal breaker by any means, but I'm just saying it might not hold up well to being run over by a car.

Display

The Wind has a LED backlit matte textured LCD. It is very bright and easy to read, and rates very well to others screens I have used. Colors are vibrant and contrast is excellent. On the flip side, the screen does have the infamous sparkly texture to it giving solid colors a dirty look, and on high backlight settings you can see some backlight bleed and almost make out each individual LED. None of those drawbacks would be enough to make me not buy one, but it might be enough for someone to give it a second thought it they were more on the obsessive side of things.

Viewing angles are just how I like them, wide in both vertical and horizontal planes. I have always found it kinda funny that "cheap and affordable" subnotebooks can always manage to beat out multimedia powerhouses in this screen aspect. With some screens inverting colors or going distorted with minimal vertical movement, the MSI Wind's LCD keeps colors true until much steeper angles. I could say you could probably go 45-50 degrees above or below the screen before you might want to reconsider your seating position.

Keyboard and Mouse

The MSI Wind really shines with its keyboard, and taking up almost every inch of space side to side to have the largest possible keys on such a small device. The keyboard takes all but 2-3mm of space going side to side, and is really great to type on even with large hands. The only big flaw I can find with the keyboard is the super narrow ",", ".", and "/" keys which are 2/3 the width of standard letter keys. This threw me off at first trying to type in websites, and hitting the "/" key instead of a period. Once you got used to the layout it wasn't as much of a problem, but come on, why ruin such a good thing? The shift keys on both sides should have been reduced in size by half and still been perfectly fine, and you wouldn't have to have 2/3 size symbol keys.

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The touchpad is slightly recessed from the palmrest by about 1mm, giving a defined lip around the entire perimeter. For small touchpads this can be very handy, letting you keep your finger inside the detection zone, and not always slipping out accidentally. As far as touchpads go, the sensitivity is great, letting you slide your finger along without excessive pressure for perfect tracking. At times the preset vertical and horizontal scrollbars messed with that perfection, making the mouse veer far from the intended path, but with a few adjustments peace was restored. The touchpad buttons consist of a single see-saw bar, ala early Eee PC, with shallow feedback and a semi-soft click. The clicking noise could probably best be described as a Microsoft Intellimouse clicking inside a sock.

Performance

System performance--with great help of Intel Atom processor--was stellar. Boot times into Windows XP were on par with many full-size notebooks, and casual use programs opened up without any lag. We haven't had a chance to install any of our more intensive applications such as Gimp, Half-Life, or AIM yet, but from what we can tell it should handle them just fine.
One downside we noticed that differs from pre-release model reviews is the complete lack of Turbo button. The FN+F10 overclocking feature is no more, and replaced with a simple "ECO feature" that switches between battery saver mode at 800MHz and normal mode which dynamically switches between 800MHz and 1600MHz depending on processor load.

What Heat and Noise?

For a user who has put up with super hot keyboards and bottoms of subnotebooks far too long under the excuse of "its small and space cramped", the MSI Wind was a huge surprise. After sitting on for on for a couple of hours in normal mode while plugged in, the bottom of the notebook was 90-94 degrees Fahrenheit, and the keyboard was below that. Compared to the Eee PC 900 which broke 100 degrees on the bottom and 105F on the keyboard, this is a huge advantage. For someone like a writer who might spend hours on a keyboard typing away on the road, not having your fingertips sweat like crazy is a incredible feature.

Fan noise is completely silent at best and minimal at worst ... and seemingly always running in the background. This is probably one of the big reasons the MSI Wind runs at reasonable temperatures, as it always has some air flowing through to carry away excess heat.

Ports and Features

The MSI Wind has a laundry list of features, including everything you would expect to find on a fullsize notebook. Key features include 802.11b/g wireless, Bluetooth 2.0, Webcam, and a card reader, with USB, VGA, LAN, and audio making notable appearances. While Firewire would have been nice to see, it was understandable to be missing, with an already crowded port selection on each side.

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Nice! How's batterylife on the 3-cell?

 

My main gripe is the keyboard. I struggle typing on my friend's 12" iBook, and with this having a full compliment of keys, typing will be... quite difficult.

 

looks like a winner. i might just buy one of this

 

Then this notebook is definitly not for you.

And I don't find the ibook keyboard to small... at least if it is the same size as my Powerbook, then it's the same size as 15.2" and 17" powerbooks and probably macbook pros as well (they stuck a full-size laptop keyboard on the 12", not a smaller one on the larger ones).

 

Power Book? Then again I'm not a mac guy so I'm likely wrong. In any case it wasn't a widescreen computer right? That makes a notable difference is keyboard space. 10" widescreen might not be so far off a 12 inch standard in terms of key space.

 

On my first battery cycle I probably got in the 2.5 hour mark. After I get done with the full testing I should have a better idea of actual battery life.

 

Cool. Still, 2.5 hours sound quite good from that small battery.

 

Do we have a price?

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152055&Tpk=msi+wind

$499 but currently out of stock

 

Nice review, reading it makes me want one. If only they could deliver them.

Could you describe what you precisely mean?

I've had LED screens on a Sony SZ and MBA, both had a kind of 'washed out' look in colors. The colors lacked vibrance that I'm used to on other glossy screens. I'm thinking we mean the same. Correct?

 

How does build quality compare to the EEE, Kevin?

 

A colleague of mine got one last week.

My thoughts...
Keyboard seems a lot more usable than the EeePC.
Is this supposed to have a higher screen res than the Asus? I found the text almost illegible (I've got 6/6 vision and don't wear glasses).
Weight-wise, it doesn't really seem all that much ligher than my X61s though; when laptops get this light, I don't suppose the difference in weight is all that apparent.
Also, the build quality seems to be better than the 1st gen EeePC (haven't seen the newer ones so can't compare with them).

It however isn't for me. I'm more than happy with my X61s; it already is half as heavy as my T60.

 

Once again, you folks will have to wait until we publish the full review next week to get answers to some of these questions.

We've had the MSI Wind for less than 24 hours at this point.

 

Not many notebooks would. But being smaller than the average notebook, there's a bigger chance of the car missing it.

I'm waiting for the rest of the review.

John

 

Another vapor-ware product with the Intel Unobtanium 2 CPU! Very few in the USA have received theirs. You could go into a supermarket in Germany and pick up the re-badge clones.

 

@JerryJ

Please please include HDTune screenshots, Thanks

 

We always do in the full reviews.

 

They have finally started to ship. My dad's friend got one yesterday from one of the MSI pre-orders.

 

That's because the Wind is actually quite heavy for a 10" laptop. The real weight even with 3 cell battery is above 1.1kg I believe.

 

Clicked on the Newegg link, and the page says it's "In Stock" at the moment (10:42AM Central).

 

are we going to get a mini-note comparo blow out later? (when all of them hit the market)

asus vs acer vs msi vs dell vs hp?

tks

 

So it actually does have an LED backlit screen. Interesting, I never noticed that in preliminary specs.

 

I second that!

With the msi, asus & acer all trickling out now, I think you could do a complete roundup (minus the dell) in a week or so.... help us pass the time 'till Montevina notebooks start shipping

Scott

 

looks interesting... but not enough for my purposes... Need HD support (x4500), as well as HDMI out instead of VGA and SDHC reader. Maybe next revision?

 

Won't there be a lower priced Linux Version??

 

Yea there should be a 399 model with Linux and 512MB of ram.

 

Two generations from now perhaps, but the next revision? Highly unlikely considering its pricepoint.

 

I third this motion!

While NBR does a fantastic job with their reviews, considering all the budget systems that will soon be available, it would be sweet to have a one-thread-owns-all to compare them side by side.

 

Well even though NBR doesn't have one atm, there is one located here:
http://www.umpcportal.com/products/...182,185,192,200,98,188,171,197,17,23,43,208]]

 

thanks for the chart!!!

Hopefully there will be a side by side comparison with reviewer's comments later. That would be the best.

tks

sg

 

Oddly enough, the Wind seems to be the one notebook not there

 

I believe it's listed as the Medion Akoya (rebadge)

 

What I'd really like to know is how good is this screen while being outside? If you could asnwer that or include it in the full review I'd be grateful.


Another chart with a very good comparison of all the netbooks available: link

 

2 bad about the dedicated turbo button being gone. now it'll only underclock.

the design sure changed fast.

 

I will try and make sure I grab a shot of the screen outside next to at least my thinkpad (if not another notebook) for the full review.

 

Great little system, but the wireless drivers are horrible. Can't get any linux distro to work, even rebuilt the drivers with a wiki and that failed.. Mandriva looked nice but could not find the ndiswrapper to work with it. So I like this computer, but want linux on it now

 

I don't agree. Eee keyboard sucks for the same reason (the right shift key). Acer Portable One's keyboard layout with lowered arrow keys and full right shift key is the perfect design.

 

You need a different wireless card for that. I read about it on a dutch forum. Intel seems to work well.

 

My request is that you guys see how Vista runs on there. I want to maybe get one of these for my wife, she wants a notebook and it would keep her off my PC. Cheap, cute, small, the wind is a perfect match. However ever since I put Vista on our PC she hates XP now and I dont think she would like to use XP on her notebook. I know somewhere they said the Wind will even run Vista, but some more detailed reviews of how well it runs it would be great.

 

When I am done with the main review I hope to load Vista onto it since if I bought one of em that would be the intended OS. Drivers would be the only thing I would be concerned about, but I figure Intel should have some basic reference stuff to work with.

 

Before you make your purchase, you should know that MSI's initial review units and display models differ from what they are actually shipping. The touchpad you will actually receive isn't made by Synaptic anymore, for example. It is made by Sentelic (Sen... who???) and is significantly inferior:

http://forums.msiwind.net/general-discussion/new-cell-u100-don-use-synaptics-touchpad-t2133.html

It's annoying me to no end, as I hate tap-to-click, and that feature is built into the IC on the pad. This is true with Synaptic touchpads too, except that Synaptics (and virtually all other manufacturers) all it to be disabled via a driver.

 

That is completely untrue. I have an MSI Wind that I just got this week through Newegg and it has a synaptic touchpad. If you need proof I can post a printscreen of the Synaptics software that works with mine...

 

And you don't like tap to click?

 

lol yeah. It also has a seesaw left and right click, so what's your problem with the touchpad??

 

@shoelace_510

There's an awful lot of people claiming to have received Sentelic drivers on the forums. I just thought someone might like to know. There's more posting in Germany, too:
http://forum.msi-wind.de/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=961
I have no way of knowing exactly how many Winds shipped with Synaptic vs Sentelic touchpads. Anyways, it's great that you received a working machine at least... want to trade?

Not on a 1.7" x 2" touchpad I don't. I kinda like being able to scroll from one side of the screen to the other without tapping random files. Granted there's people who do like it... so if you bought a Wind that shipped with the original touchpad, you can choose for yourself.

As a side note, I also kinda like being able to find decent touchpad drivers in Linux or OS X 86, too. I can't complain to MSI about that since they don't support those OSes, but y'know it's still annoying when you've done your homework on a machine, and wind up receiving something different. Since Sentelic is not a well known company it makes it harder to find OSS drivers.