120 GB SATA Hard Drive, 1GB DDR2 667MHz RAM, 2 GB Max
Built-in Gigabit Ethernet LAN and Modem Module, Built-in 802.11b/g WLAN Card/Bluetooth Supported
Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition
Rating: - MSI WIND
I thought this Item was perfect for what it is. A netbook. Small and lightweight for travel. The only problem I had was the right side of the space bar did not work.
Rating: - exceptional little device
I bought this based on product reviews. I'd never heard of MSI before. I just knew I needed something light, reliable, and didn't want to learn a new operating system. This little computer does everything I need in a laptop. It's fast, lightweight, and I carry it with me everywhere. The only drawback is the short battery life of the 3 cell. Otherwise, plenty of bang for the buck.
Rating: - Nice little machine terrible touch pad
Overall this is a nice little machine for the price. Unfortunately I learned after purchasing that MSI discontinued the Synaptic touch pad and is now shipping with the inferior and no doubt cheaper Sentelic touch pad which does not include the finger sliding scroll feature. This is the worst touch pad I have ever used and frankly I would not have purchased the system had I known of the swap beforehand.
Rating: - Maybe not an only computer, but it ROCKS for travel essentials!
I just wanted a secure client (i.e., my own computer) while on personal travel, and this exceeds my expectations. As a light packer, I was not looking forward to lugging a heavy 14" laptop along.
I am a fast touch-typist with large hands. The HP 2133 has full-sized keys, but it's pricey and heavy. I could not type at all on any of the Asus "net books"; it was just impossible. The Asus keys appear to be about the same size as these, but these are ever-so-slightly larger with bevel edges for separation and it makes all the difference.
Consider spending slightly more for this one, which has longer battery life and an additional 40 GB of disk.
MSI's Live Update Online gave me a *scary* warning and required me to OK running it at my own risk outside the warranty (because it could include BIOS updates). After all that it found no applicable updates to install! Ha!
STRENGTHS:
* Though small, the display is nice and bright. It's kind of exciting, a cool little device.
* Good old 32-bit Windows runs great. It came with XP Home Edition, SP 3. Set-up was a breeze and there were no "craplets" to clean off, just a trial version of MS Office.
* Bootup --from cold to password prompt-- is only 36 seconds! After typing in my password, disk activity settles down after only 20 seconds, but this will vary with what software you have loading at startup.
* Performance is great for what I run: the IE 7 browser w/Google toolbar, TextPad 5.2, PGP Desktop 9.9, and a good free photo editor called IrfanView 4.2.
* If I don't feel like connecting my camera, I can just stick its SD card directly into the slot. (I've done it with cards from Canon and Minolta cameras, probably works for any.)
* It came with Windows Magnifier, which I had never heard of until I got this. It magnifies fine print in case you're without reading glasses.
* The con that's really a pro: it's tiny, so I don't spend so much of my vacation on the computer.
LIMITATIONS:
* My Canon camera's software refuses to load, citing insufficient screen resolution. (1024x600 and 800x600 are the only choices on this computer.) You might experience this with your apps; read the label on the software box. (I can still offload photos to the laptop and use IrfanView to tweak them.)
* The loudspeaker ("squeaker") is such a joke that it's cute, but it's loud enough on headphones.
* You have to hold down the Fn key to use the End or Home keys.
TIPS/FYI:
* Fn+F3 turns off the touch pad so that one can type without the cursor jumping all over the place.
* Run Windows update and let it load IE 7. Then Youtube and CNN will work. (They didn't in the store, where the floor model had apparently not been updated. Youtube's a little jittery.) My banking sites work, as do advanced, feature-rich sites such as WSJ and Amazon.
* Set-up partitions the disk into a C: "drive" for the Windows operating system with about 30 GB of free space left over (where I installed all my software), and an empty 70 GB D: drive.
* There's no CD or DVD player, so software must be downloaded from the net or from a USB device (external CD/DVD or memory stick). That keeps the weight down.
* It runs 90 minutes on battery and then KABOOM! It plays the two-piano-note Windows "asterisk" sound and shut itself down in the blink of an eye. I plug in the AC adapter and it's back up in under ten seconds (!) and has not lost any work! Awesome! 8-[] It takes about two hours to charge back up while in use.
One Acer has a similar price & keyboard, but I did not test it. Sorry for the lengthy review but there are too many considerations about a computer to cover in 300 words. I hope I hit some points that you find useful.
MSI Wind U100-016US 10-Inch Mini Laptop (1.6 GHz Intel Atom Processor, 1 GB RAM, 120 GB Hard Drive, XP Home, 3 Cell Battery) Black Reviews
- 
- 
-