MSI Wind U100 at Best Buy

Updated: MSI Wind U100 at Best Buy for $350 (Nov 2008).

Last Friday, an MSI executive in the US mentioned that the MSI Wind U100 would be coming to an American retail chain this week.

Our best guesses would be Best Buy or Circuit City, and it appears that it was indeed Best Buy, according to the press release and other sites (including LAPTOP Magazine).

The two possible models:
- U100-036US (White)
- U100-016US (Black)
- There is no pink model that matches the specifications.

Specifications:
- $399.99
- 3-Cell Battery
- 120GB HDD
- 1GB RAM
- Windows XP Home

There is no date on when these will be available in store, other than later this month. They are not even listed in Best Buy’s online system as of this morning.

Press release is below.
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Lenovo IdeaPad S10 - Some Shipping

We’ve had a few emails from people today who mention that their pre-orders of the 10″ Lenovo IdeaPad S10s have had the dates changed to later in October (almost a month from now to be exact).

We also had an email from somebody who said their S10 has actually shipped.

From what we’ve seen from these people and from sites like Slickdeals, It appears this might be what is happening:

- White S10: Some shipping this week, some people have received them.
- Red S10: Shipping changed to around October 20
- Black S10: Shipping changed to around October 23

If you have had your S10 ship, or have in fact received it (or will be), you can leave a comment (no login/etc. required) or contact us.

Dell Moving to All LED-Backlit Displays

PC Magazine is reporting that Dell will be making the transition to all LED-backlit displays for its laptops by 2010. They told PC Magazine that by the middle of this December, around 66% of their existing Latitude E-series laptops will be shipped with LED-backlit displays (mercury-free no less) as the standard display.

Some of Dell’s ultraportables, such as the 12.1″ Latitude E4200 and 13.3″ Latitude E4300 are already using LED-backlit displays,

They predict that around 80% of all Dell laptops sold by the end of 2009 will be LED-backlit.

It’s hard to say when some of their budget lines, such as the 13.3″ Dell Inspiron 13 will be LED-backlit - probably by the end of the 2009 since they could (in theory) share panels with the E4300 series.

This should help extend battery life on most models (15-20% depending on who you ask) as well as help bring the price of such panels down as economies of scale kicks in.

Read: PC Magazine

Netbook Sales and the Industry

DigiTimes has an article up about how Asustek is using netbooks to take on the top notebook suppliers in Japan next year.

Their Asus Eee PC line (including the 7″ Eee PC 700 series as well as the 8.9″ 900 series) now accounts for around 85% of their sales in Japan (although Asustek wants to increase their regular-sized notebook sales which would drop that number).

Through August, Asustek has sold 188,000 Eee PC netbooks in Japan through August.

The 1st place Eee PC901-X and 2nd place Eee PC 4G-X accounted for around 70% of the under 100,000 Yen (US$946.52), while the 3rd place 8.9″ Acer Aspire One accounted for 9% of sales, with the 4th place 10″ MSI Wind U100 account for 8% of sales. HP’s 8.9″Mini-Note 2133 came in sixth.
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Toshiba and Netbooks

Update: Toshiba has rolled out the Toshiba Satellite NB105.

Could Toshiba be jumping into the netbook market? An anonymous user over at jkOnTheRun has mentioned that Toshiba has been showing off a netbook with decidedly normal netbook specifications:

- 8.9″ 1024×600 display
- Intel Atom 1.6GHz CPU
- 4-cell Battery (shades of Dell’s Inspiron 9?)
- Windows XP (probably Home)
- Both SSD and HDD options

This would mark Toshiba’s first forray into the sub-notebook market since their 7.2 Libretto U105 a few years ago, which was well received among certain groups. Of course, the U100 and U105 were based on architecture that was geared more towards larger laptops, and they were slightly larger and heavier than what we see with netbooks now (although not too much depending on the model), but they were amazing devices for the time, given the constraints.

It’s interesting to consider - with Lenovo and Dell jumping into the game recently, outside of Toshiba, that really only leaves Sony and Apple as the major laptop players left, and there are already reports that Sony is jumping into the netbook market later this year.

Read: jkOnTheRun

Dell Inspiron Mini 9 - 2GB RAM, Q&A, Video, Expandability

Some interesting articles from LAPTOP Magazine about the 8.9″ Dell Inspiron Mini 9 netbook have popped up.

First-up, Avram Piltch in the LAPTOP Magazine blog takes a look at the expansion options available for the Inspiron Mini 9. This is, to me, the most impressive thing about the Inspiron Mini 9. Dell has went out of their way to make it easy to access everything - there is a cover on the bottom that allows you access (another LAPTOP Magazine article covers RAM upgrades, including 2GB). The panel covers the memory slot, two mini PCIe card slots (one is filled with the Dell WiFi card), and the Solid State Drive (SSD).
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