MSI Wind U100

If you’ve been holding off buying a netbook until the dust has settled, the good news is that you can reach for your credit card now. The last of the eagerly anticipated Intel Atom-powered netbook models is now available – the MSI Wind.

Lots of people (us included) have been looking forward to the Wind the most, since it seems to offer the best combination of features for a near-laptop like experience – a large screen, large keyboard and 80Gb hard drive, all in package little bigger than the diminutive Asus Eee PC 901 or Acer Aspire One. So, was it worth the wait?

First impressions of the MSI Wind are really strong. 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. Thankfully, MSI has dumped the horrific circular badge it uses on its other laptops and the Wind has a simply, painted logo in the centre of its lid.

As you can see from the photos, we reviewed the white MSI Wind, but models will be available in black and pink, too.

Both the edges of the lid and the front of the case are curved to fool the eye into thinking the laptop is thinner than it really is (again, same as the Aspire One), but at just 34m, the Wind is only a little thicker than the Acer Aspire One (29mm) and a bit thinner than the Asus Eee PC 901 (40mm). The Wind is the widest of three though, 260mm – that’s 11mm wider than the Aspire One and 35mm wider than the Eee PC.

It has to be said that when a netbook reaches this sort of size, it’s on the brink of becoming just another laptop, but we think the Wind just about pulls it off. And besides, that extra bit of case has allowed MSI to fit a 10in screen – something that can’t be found on any other netbook available at the moment.

The Wind’s screen diagonal only measures 1.1in more than that of the other netbooks we’ve reviewed (including the bigger-still HP 2133 Mini-Note), but the screen does look noticeably larger than that on the competition. It’s a shame that MSI hasn’t plumped for a higher resolution (1024 x 800 would solve most of the disappearing dialog box issues), but even at 1024 x 600, the slightly increased pixel size makes everything just that little bit easier to see – but only a little, mind.

At its middle brightness setting, the vibrant LED backlit screen is brighter than the Eee PC 901’s at maximum brightness, but it’s no crisper. Viewing angles are about the same as the Eee PC’s, too, and the screen is perfectly clear in daylight – as you can see in the short video clip below.

There has been some discussion online about the effectiveness of the Wind’s screen hinges, but we can’t see what the problem is – at least on our retail unit. The hinges hold the screen stiffly enough and they have enough play to cause a little screen wobble if the laptop is jiggled, this doesn’t happen unless you have a particularly violent typing technique.

The lid doesn’t open completely flat, but it is heavy enough to almost overbalance the Wind when pushed to its maximum 140 degrees or so – a small push on the screen is enough to tip the laptop over. Again, this is unlikely to be a problem in daily use, though some reports suggest that it’s more of a problem with the bulkier six-cell battery – retail units have the smaller, lighter three-cell battery. Incidentally, the lid has no latch, but is held closed with magnetic fasteners.

The other component to benefit from the wider case is the keyboard and the Wind has the best we’ve so far seen on a netbook. The keys are about the same size as those on the Aspire One and are equally comfortable to use, but the extra space means there’s room four a double-height Enter key and a large Backspace key – the larger 2133 Mini-Note is the only other netbook to manage this.

Given the size of the keyboard, the touchpad looks a little undersized in comparison, but while it could be wider, there isn’t enough room in the wrist-rest to make it much taller. It works well enough, though the single strip of plastic that forms the mouse buttons could do with being a little wider.

The rest of the Wind’s specification is essentially the same as that of the other Intel Atom-powered netbooks – 1.6GHz N270 processor, 1Gb DDR2 RAM, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and the same selection of ports. One important difference, however, is that all models have an 80Gb hard drive rather than a much smaller SSD. Windows XP runs more comfortably as a result, since there’s room for both a swap file and to enable hibernation (which requires as much disk space as there is RAM – a problem on a 4Gb SSD). The disadvantage, of course, is that a hard disk is much more vulnerable to damage than an SSD with its zero moving parts, but we think the trade-off is worth it.

The hard drive also makes a measurable difference to performance compared to an SSD. The Wind was some 16% faster overall than the SSD-equipped Eee PC 901, and 31% faster in the multi-application test. And as with the Aspire One, the Wind barely gets warm to the touch even when it's running flat-out and the fan that blows air through the left-hand case vent is very quiet – which is just as well, since it seems to run all the time.

The Wind also runs YouTube videos comfortably at full-screen – the clip below shows it in action with YouTube , Blip.tv and BBC iPlayer. It's worth noting in this clip that the volume is set at 50% and so our earlier fears about speaker power (they're mounted on the underside of the front edge of the case) were unfounded – they're more than loud enough!

MSI announced a few weeks ago that the Wind would ship with a 2200mAh battery rather than the original 5200mAh one we saw in the prototype model. This is obviously disappointing, since the prototype had a battery life of several hours (at least according to Windows' own estimate – we weren't able to test it) and that made for a very versatile laptop.

The prototype MSI Wind we first saw also had options to overclock and underclock the processor to some degree, for situations where you needed a boost to either performance or battery life. Alas, MSI has disabled the overclock feature – MSI wasn’t confident that it wouldn’t affect the processor’s well-being and so sensibly removed it.

The underclock feature remains though, and when manually activated with a keyboard shortcut (it’s not automatic, like on the Eee PC 901), the power LED changes from blue to green, the Atom processor is locked at 800Mhz (even when under load), and screen brightness drops to 20% or so.

In standard mode, the MSI Wind lasted for two and a half hours in our light-use test, and just under 80 minutes in our heavy-use test – not bad, but nothing to get excited about. By cranking down the processor speed, power-saver mode stretches battery life by 20 minutes for heavy-use, but doesn't make much difference to light-use – the processor isn't doing much in this test anyway, and any power saving is almost all due to the screen brightness being lowered.

It's interesting to note that the MSI Wind's light-use battery life is the same as that of the Acer Aspire One – interesting because the Aspire One also has a 2200mAh battery and a supposedly frugal SSD, while the Wind has hard disk. In other words, those extra moving parts in the storage department make no difference to battery life, despite what SSD advocates would have you believe.

Unfortunately, there's a bug in the BIOS that shipped with the three retail MSI Wind U100's that were sent to Dennis for review. When the battery is completely drained (as happens in our battery tests), the Wind won't power on when plugged back into the mains until the battery has accrued 15 minutes' or so of charge. Plugging the Wind into the mains with the battery removed doesn't remedy the problem.

Thankfully, MSI has issued an updated BIOS (v1.05, dated 26 June) that fixes this:

EC_Note:
1. Fix Battery Critical Shutdown problem.
2. Add Keyboard & PS2 Reset Function.
3. Add Patch Code about Battery Low Discharge problem

You can download the BIOS update from the MSI support site and our guide on how to create a bootable USB flash drive shows you how to update the Wind's BIOS without using a floppy disk.

At £363 for the Windows XP model and £318 for Linux (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop), the MSI Wind U100 compares very favourably with the similarly priced HP 2133 Mini-Note. The larger keyboard and higher specification also leads us to like it more than the smaller, cheaper Eee PC 901, though we're beginning to think that paying more than £300 for a device like this means you're getting a small laptop rather than a true netbook.

All things considered though, the MSI Wind is our favourite netbook/cheap ultra-portable so far, but two things prevent us from giving it full marks. One is that battery and while a 2200mAh cell is excusable on the £220 Acer Aspire One, it's one cut corner too many on the £363 MSI Wind.

The other is that PC World is selling a rebadged MSI Wind as the Advent 4211. It has Windows XP and essentially the same specification, yet costs just £280 – that's £40 less than the MSI Wind with Linux. So, the fact that you can buy the Wind for less from another manufacturer means that MSI's own model misses out on an award.

[Related: See all Mobile Computer netbook reviews to date] 

And because you asked for it, here's a video clip that shows the MSI Wind booting up, then entering (and exiting!) its hibernate state: