![]() MSI has done its best by stretching the keyboard to the absolute edges of the notebook, and doing the same for the keypad. While processors, RAM and even hard drives continue to shrink every year, making subnotebooks faster and more capable with every generation, there’s only so much that can be done to make a 10-inch keyboard and matchbook-sized touchpad more comfortable. While solid-state drives are slightly faster and more durable, for the moment we still feel the ample storage provided by conventional drives is more practical, and we were pleased to see MSI stick with what works. The Wind’s 80GB hard drive was also a pleasant surprise, leaving plenty of room onboard for both applications and data. Of course, the integrated Intel GMA 945 Express graphics will prevent it from playing anything that needs DirectX, severely limiting modern options, but crank the time machine back to 2000 and any game is your oyster. And though it’s no gaming rig, we were in awe to see that it ran Half-Life flawlessly, producing a silky smooth frame rate even with higher settings. It not only ran Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended, it booted it in five seconds flat – an impressive feat for any machine, much less one you can lift up with two fingers. In fact, the more we tried to deflate the Wind by piling on more and more software that was clearly not intended for subnotebooks, the more impressed we were. And indeed, the Wind takes its somewhat clunkier OS in stride: with multiple windows open, our Wind was responsive, and quick to pile on more. ![]() The mere fact that the Wind comes preloaded with Windows XP is a testament to its computational horsepower, considering that first-gen netbooks like the Asus Eee 701 and CloudBook needed stripped-down versions of Linux run nicely. Neither were showstoppers, but we wouldn’t call the Wind sturdy. Our model had a keyboard trim piece that didn’t seem to mate very well with the shell, and weak hinges that allowed the display to bounce around with the slightest provocation. While we were generally satisfied with the feel and function of the Wind, that’s only in relation to the lowered standards we have for subnotebooks, which seem to have an inescapable, toy-like cheapness to them. The powerful LED backlight left little to be desired in terms of brightness, but we were slightly disappointed with the viewing angle, which had us constantly twisting and turning to make sure we were looking at it dead on. You probably wouldn’t want to perform an extensive research project on it, or read A Tale of Two Cities, but for routine Craigslist browsing, e-mail reading, and IM, it’s up to the task.Īs for display quality, our model seemed to have a pronounced bluish tinge with the default settings, but Intel’s display drivers made this easy to correct. Besides adding an extra three inches of physical screen space diagonally, resolution also jumps from 800 x 480 (on a seven-inch screen) to 1024 x 600.Īlthough you’ll never mistake the Wind for a full-size notebook, we found we could comfortably browse almost any Web page without side scrolling, and text was easily readable. MSI has upped the size to a full 10- inches with the Wind, making an enormous difference in usability. ![]() One of the biggest complaints about the first generation of subnotebooks focused on their miniscule seven-inch screens, which made many tasks, like Web browsing, feel a bit like trying to take in the Grand Canyon through a submarine porthole. The Wind is MSI’s freshman effort in the emerging subnotebook genre, but the company has managed to run with the best of them by offering a 10-inch display, a fast and efficient Intel Atom processor, and loads of storage. In that time, many have tried, but few have succeeded in one upping Asus at its own game. It’s been almost a year since the original Asus Eee 701 appeared stateside, making traditional ultra-portables look fat with its size and weight, sending prices plunging with its $400 price tag, and triggering a landslide of imitators. Three-cell battery may be inadequate build quality could be a tad better ![]()
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