MSI Wind Review Part 2: Running Windows Vista

by Kevin O'Brien

Almost every mini notebook manufacturer is shunning Windows Vista, and manufacturers are turning towards Windows XP or Linux. Some say it is because the operating system is less bloated and more power efficient, while others say it is just cheaper to buy. Since I have had the mentality that Vista only needs a few mild tweaks before it feels like an enhanced XP, I decided to pull the trigger and load Vista onto our MSI Wind.

Specifications

• 1.6GHz Intel Atom Processor
• 10" WSVGA (1024 x 600) LCD
• Windows Vista Home Basic
• Intel GMA 950 Integrated Graphics
• 1GB 667MHz DDR2 Memory
• 80GB 2.5" SATA Hard Drive
• Wireless: 802.11b/g and Bluetooth 2.0
• 3-Cell 11.1v 2200mAh Battery
• Size: WxDxH 10.2" x 7" x 1.3"
• Weight: 2lbs 8.6oz

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Getting Started

MSI doesn't officially support Windows Vista on the Wind, and has no drivers specifically labeled for use in Vista. When I first loaded Vista onto our Wind, I was a bit concerned since the wireless LAN and wired LAN were not working from the start. Without a network connection you are really out of luck, so this was a make or break situation. I turned to the MSI driver site and decided to give the XP drivers a shot, and turns out they work without any problem. Same goes for the wired LAN and then card reader drivers which are eventually pulled in via Windows Update once I had an internet connection.

The next step was getting the Intel GMA 950 working, which was as simple as pulling a driver pack from the Intel site. Audio drivers worked from the start, so now the computer was good to go. Another Vista perk was the incessant "wireless connection" status windows which would not stop popping up in XP never once came up while running Vista. Either the drivers worked better, or Vista just suppresses those messages. I was very happy to not have to deal with closing those annoying pop-up messages anymore.

Speed and Performance

After going about my usual routine of disabling User Access Control, Scheduled Defrag, Windows Update, and System Restore the Wind was as fast, if not faster, than when running XP. The interface just felt smoother, applications like 3DMark06 which crashed in Windows XP now worked perfectly in Windows Vista, and the integrated graphics now had access to 250MB of shared memory instead of just 50MB inside XP. All of the games I tested inside of XP were running just as well, some having higher peak frame rates. Half-Life 1 which used to peak around 60-64 frames per second (FPS) now peaked above 70FPS.

wPrime processor comparison results (lower scores mean better performance):

Notebook/OS	wPrime score
MSI Wind (Windows Vista)	117.501 seconds
MSI Wind (Windows XP)	124.656 seconds

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3DMark06 Graphics Performance Benchmark (higher scores indicate better performance):

Notebook/OS	3DMark Score
MSI Wind (Windows Vista)	112 3DMarks
MSI Wind (Windows XP)	Not Available

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3DMark03 Graphics Performance Benchmark (higher scores indicate better performance):

Notebook/OS	3DMark Score
MSI Wind (Windows Vista)	663 3DMarks
MSI Wind (Windows XP)	589 3DMarks

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Windows Experience Index Scores:

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Battery Life

I expected battery life to be same, if not a bit lower than XP. Vista has more things always working in the background, the system uses more of its RAM, and Vista is bloated right? Much to my surprise, battery life turned out to be quite improved under Vista: almost 20% better than Windows XP under the same conditions. Using the "balanced" power profile with brightness at mid level and wireless active the battery life hovered around 2 hours and 45 minutes before leveling off around 2 hours and 30 minutes before it conked out. Compared to the system running XP where it got 2 hours and 6 minutes, this is quite a jump.

System Device Control

Another aspect of Vista is some items just "work" without any additional software needed. All of the small bits of hardware inside the MSI Wind worked out of the box. This included all of the Function keys listed below:

• Touchpad Disable/Enable
• Brightness Up/Down
• Webcam Disable/Enable
• Volume Up/Down
• Volume Mute
• Wireless Device Control (Wifi On, BlueTooth On, Wifi/BT On, All Off)
• Sleep

Now you didn't exactly get the pretty onscreen controls courtesy of MSI, but all of the access keys worked without any delay, which was noticeable in XP.

Conclusion

While Windows Vista gets a lot of bad press these days, it isn't always the worst operating system choice for notebooks. In our quick testing of Windows Vista on the MSI Wind, not only did it give us a nice bump in performance, but we also gained battery life. For a compact subnotebook you really can't ask for more, especially on the battery life front. For now I think Vista is here to stay on our MSI Wind (well before we have to send it back).

 

Nice review! Here is a comparison video of the EEE 901 running Vista: http://jkkmobile.blogspot.com/2008/07/asus-eee-pc-901-with-vista-ultimate.html

 

Interesting. I would expect some difference but not that much. What were the visual settings?

As a matter of curiosity and entertainment, what is the WEI for the Wind?

John

 

Wow, its interesting that Vista works so much better than XP. I really guessed that it would be the other way around, and the high system requirements that Vista requires would ultimately make for an unsatisfying computing experience.

I guess that is not the case. Unfortunately, the Wind probably can't run Aero, correct?

 

The WEI has a its own picture in the review

Aero should work if I used Home Premium, but I had Home Basic on it.

 

I assume it's just by chance that jkk's 901 scored 0.2 more on WEI in the Processor category than your Wind?

 

Might have been in Turbo mode or something. The 901 I played with in Taiwan also benchmarked higher than the Wind. Odd since they have the same processor, but the Wind lacked the overclocking stuff that the 901 had.

 

It could also be that the 901 was overclocked ... several Atom-based mini notebooks have the option to overclock the processor for better performance.

Edit: I see Kevin typed faster.

 

This is totally different than what I'd expect. The fact that even the battery lasts longer really surprises me!

 

Exactly. Down is up. Up is down. Dogs and cats are living together ... and having fish babies! The world is coming to an end!

Seriously, it's just plain freaky to see a notebook perform better with Vista.

 

And not just yer ol' Core 2 Duo notebook - NO - a 'slow' 1.6 GHz Intel Atom machine!

 

Very interesting review. I would think there's something wrong with the drivers or settings in XP, since it also wouldn't play 720p fluently in XP.

It's also strange that the battery life in XP was considerably shorter than other reviews. In Vista it seems on par.

 

Color me extremely surprised at those results. Are you sure there wasn't a mix-up!?

I may finally try Vista out now, I never even gave it a chance, immediately downgraded to XP on mine.

 

The 720p content I was testing on XP played slightly better on Vista, but still not full framerates.

 

Ah!. Now I see it. The desktop graphics performance is better than the X3100 in my Zepto 6024W which only scores 3.5!

Trusted Reviews also put Vista on the Wind and weren't so impressed but the performance.

John

 

This is cool! I wonder if you ran the WIND on power saver mode in vista and adjusted the advanced settings for processor min/max to very low, if you could pass the 3 hour mark. Of course its just depending on what you do. But with all notebooks i've used, vista does yield slightly better battery life (once you stabilize and unbloat it to reduce start up time and random background programs).

 

That's very interesting, they reach a very different conclusion. I wonder what causes these differences.

 

Did Trusted Reviews put it in Aero, or do any of the mild tweaking?

 

It looks like Trusted Reviews installed a different version of Vista. They used vistalite instead of vista. Maybe they also have a different version of the Wind, one that doesn't have as much RAM.

 

wow that was...........unexpected
vista beat Xp in most if not all aspects here
seems to me like Armageddon is here!!!

 

i still say Vista may be better than Xp in all areas except gaming

 

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2302500,00.asp

looks pretty damn close to me.

 

I'm not that suprised. I've noticed that Vista runs better than XP on all the machines I've installed it on as long as you turn off all the services and especially Aero.

I think there's a general misconception that Vista has worse performance than XP. This is true if you turn everything on, but if you turn things off it runs just as well.

Now, better compatibility with the hardware I am surprised at especially since the Wind doesn't offer a Vista version. I would not have expected Vista to work as well there. It even sounds like Vista worked better in some cases. That's strange.

 

Several? Aren't all official releases of Wind and 901 non-everclockable now?
Let's wait for someone to WEI at stock clock, I guess.

 

Haha awesome. Great addition to the Wind review IMO

 

Sounds awesome. Finally, I can point all the Vista haters I know to this review. If it can run this well on essentially "crippled" hardware, with just a basic tweaks, it will be hard for them to continue throwing made up or antiquated benchmarks at me.

That said, I just installed BootCamp 2.0 on my Vista Ultimate setup. Everything works so well it's like a dream. I can't believe I was using the Beta for almost a year!

 

Surprising, but not entirely. A few points:

*Vista always has scored better on wPrime. Whether that means it is better for processor-intensive tasks is debatable. AMD Turion X2 processors with the same clock speed as Intel Core 2 Duos also score better on wPrime, yet the Core 2 Duo is almost universally recommended as the faster processor.
*3dmark03 was, if I remember, berated for not being as accurate as 3dmarks01, 05, and 06. Thus it's quite difficult to say Vista does better with graphics with 3dmark03. I'd be curious to see if 3dmark01 or 05 give the same results.
*Vista does still take a lot more hard drive space, which isn't insignificant on an 80 GB hard drive.
*There's still only 1 GB of memory. So it's very questionable just how far these performance gains, will hold out.

It does seem that XP's graphics performance on the Wind was a bit below average though. It seems that there was something not quite right with MSI's driver. Which begs the question of, were the XP graphics drivers MSI or laptopvideo2go? Perhaps the unofficial Vista drivers accounted for a good deal of the graphics difference.

Admittingly I far favor XP over Vista, due to compatibility, stability, and driver issues. But there are a few possible explanations for the performance difference that are not covered here.

 

That could very well be the case.

Edit: that the Vista installation benfited from better video drivers.

 

But isn't the Wind's GPU the Intel GMA950? I was under the impression that LaptopVideo2go didn't offer an improved driver for Intel integrated GPUs.

Am I wrong?

John

 

Yea I always thought it was either straight from Intel, or from whatever brand the laptop is (MSI in this case).

Which would mean a Vista upgrade shouldn't boost IGP performance from driver updates, but rather, from better memory distribution to IGP?

 

Out of curiousity, did you also disable the Scheduled Defrag, Windows Update, and System Restore on the XP? Mainly from my experience Vista was usually slower on a quite a number of task.

 

I have also tried to install vista on the wind. Performance is good actually better than XP. I even have aero on. But somehow i can't seem to install the LAN driver correctly. It keeps on having a warning and is disabled.

 

What about file transfer, namely from USB to HDD and back? That seems to be the issue that annoys me the most.

 

The first thing you have to do is to update your drivers under Vista in downloading them on a site like "touslesdrivers.com"... sorry may such a link exists for english speakers... anyway it seems to me international

 

for the same price... would you guys go for Wind or Aspire One ? do they both have almost full keyboards ? anyone know the exact keyboard dimensions for each ?