MSI Wind U100 Review, Comparison to Acer Aspire One, Eee PC 901
July 2, 2008
Mobile Computer has put together some information, photos, and a video comparison of the Acer Aspire One, MSI Wind U100, and Asus Eee PC 901, three netbooks that, despite the display-size differences, are all basically run off of the same platform, powered by Intel’s Atom CPU.
Even though the Wind U100, with a 10.2-inch widescreen display, has a larger display than the 8.9-inch displays of the Aspire One and Eee PC 901, it’s actually not that much bigger, as the photos and video illustrate.
They’ve also reviewed the MSI Wind U100, and were impressed with its design, saying:
Like Acer, MSI has gone to great lengths to ensure that the Wind looks nothing like a cheap laptop and it feels no less well made (nor any less good looking) than a laptop that costs three times as much. The all-plastic case is solid and there are no creaks or pops even when it’s flexed with both hands. There’s something about a smoothly shaped lid that we like – it worked well on the Aspire One and it’s just as good-looking here.
They gave it a rating of six out of six (the main problem being the battery, given the price) and their Editor’s Choice Award.
Read:
- Mobile Computer - Hands on with MSI Wind, Aspire One, Eee PC 901
- Mobile Computer - MSI Wind Review
Flash-Based SSDs Don’t Help Battery Life?
July 2, 2008
Tom’s Hardware has posted an article that’s generating a lot of buzz. They are saying that flash-based Solid State Drives (SSD) don’t help the battery life of your laptop. Instead, they are saying that it in fact decreases it.
Given that SSDs don’t have the mechanical (i.e. moving) parts of a conventional hard drive, as well as generate the heat that a conventional hard drive does (which causes the laptop to have to work on cooling itself, depending on how it’s designed), this is a pretty interesting view of SSDs.
Read: Tom’s Hardware
Crave’s Most Notable Notebooks from 1H 2008
July 1, 2008
Matthew Elliott hast posted an article about what he considers to be the most noteworthy notebooks to have passed through CNET in the past six months. This isn’t necessarily the highest-ranks of the review notebooks either, but ones that instead introduced something new or that did something that helped differentiate them from others.
Ultraportable laptops listed:
- Apple MacBook Air
- Lenovo IdeaPad U110
- Lenovo ThinkPad X300
- Asus Eee PC 900
- HP Compaq 2133 Mini-Note PC
- Asus Eee PC 901
Out of the 10 notebooks listed (including honorable mentions), ultraportables captured six of those positions (with three being “netbooks”).
Read: Crave / CNET
HP Pavilion tx2500z Reviews (LAPTOP Magazine, Tablet PC Rreview)
June 30, 2008
A couple of reviews of the 12.1-inch AMD-powered HP Pavilion tx2500z series, were published last friday.
The tx2500z series is the replacement of the popular HP Pavilion tx2000z. It’s just starting to appear at online stores ($1050 after rebate at Amazon.com , etc.). It’s a “convertible”, that is, it has a touchscreen display that swivels around and lays across the keyboard, allowing it to be converted and used either as a conventional laptop or as a dedicated Tablet PC.
TabletPCReview.com has a user review of the same tx2510us linked above at Amazon, and that is available for around the same price at Circuit City (in the US, if you want to see one in person, although not all stores have them). the tx2510us has an AMD Turion X2 Ultra ZM-80 CPU (2.1GHz, 2MB L2), 3GB Memory, 250GB Hard Drive, an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3200 graphics chipset, the dual active/passive digitizer, and it’s running Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit Edition. As “Rex Orbis2″ notes in his review, there were same impressive gains made over the tx2000z series, with the addition of the new AMD Puma platform. As they point out, it is geared towards consumers and multimedia enthusiasts and even digital media (it comes with a remote control for media playback).
The LAPTOP Magazine review gave it 3.5 out of 5 stars, with comments about the washed out display look (due to the fact, as noted in the TabletPCReview, that it has a dual-mode display - both an active and passive digitizer), although it is accurate, whether it’s in active or passive modes.
Read:
- LAPTOP Magazine
- TabletPCReview.com
Toshiba Satellite Pro 400 Hands-On (SlashGear)
June 27, 2008
Bree over at SlashGear has posted their hands-on experience with the Toshiba Satellite Pro 400, Toshiba’s latest 13.3-inch laptop. The unit reviewed had one of Intel’s latest CPUs, the Intel T8100 Penryn 2.1GHz processor.
They compared it to a regular Toshiba Satellite, and while it lacked some of the multimedia features of the regular, the non-glossy finish held up much better - it looked more “professional” and more importantly, hid fingerprints (something that bugs a lot of people).
They found the keyboard to be sturdier than others in its class, and felt the price was a good value (in fact, the price for non-Penryn models at some online retailers such as Amazon has dropped to $877).
Read:
- SlashGear - review
- SlashGear - Unboxing
MSI Wind Roundup, Availability in the US
June 27, 2008
Almost two weeks ago, the online MSI store was listing the 10-inch MSI Wind as being available today - June 27th - in the US but that’s not going to happen, unfortunately. Originally it was scheduled for June 16th, 2008. Now it’s looking like the week after next, July 7th or July 8th (coincidentally around the same time as the Eee PC 901 and 1000 launch).
An email was posted to the MSIWind.net forums (via liliputing) from MSI (a North American contact) stating that it would the week of July 7th, “due to the industry wide battery shortage“. The good news (if you want to call it that) is that shipping for the MSI Wind NB from the MSI Online Store will be upgraded to overnight shipping, free of charge. Contact numbers are listed at the link above.
