Build and Design

The MSI Wind really has a splendid look and feel to it. The soft rounded edges paired with the glossy surface make it effortless and comfortable to clutch onto, while still giving the mini notebook a very professional appeal. An added terrific aspect of the Wind is nothing appears "look at me" flamboyant, making it very appealing to business professionals, as well as children and teenagers alike. No chrome is found anywhere, and all the labeling and branding is a light grey which really goes well with the pearl white polish.

Build quality is outstanding, and reminds me very much of the HP Mini-Note. Fit and finish is great with smooth and stiff plastic seams, beveled edges, recessed hinges, and a bounty of touches here and there that give somebody no option but to feel as if they are getting money's worth with this notebook. The quality of the plastics used is top-of-the-line, and thick enough to make it not bend even under a strong grip. The LCD cover and palmrest reveal no bend under intense pressure, but the underside panel is frail in a few spots and easy to bend. Not a deal breaker by any amount, but I'm merely saying it might not stand up well to being run over by a car.

The Screen

The Wind has a LED backlit matte textured LCD. It is very sharp and simple to read. Colors are vibrant and contrast is superb. On the flip side, the screen does have the infamous sparkly surface to it giving solid colors a muddy look, and on excessive backlight settings some backlight bleed is visable and you can almost see each single LED. None of those drawbacks would be sufficient to make me not purchase one, but it might be sufficient for someone who doesn't like seeing a second reflection.

Viewing angles are precisely how I like them, broad in both vertical and horizontal planes. With a number of screens inverting colors or becoming distorted with a small amount of vertical movement, the MSI Wind's LCD keeps colors exact until much steeper angles. I could say you could probably go 45-50 degrees higher than or underneath the screen before you might be looking for a better seating stance. Horizontal viewing angles were not as good as the vertical, with the screen appearing much darker in side viewing positions. The colors didn't exactly invert, but screen was dark enough to grow to be unwatchable for secondary viewing buddies who you might be sharing a movie with.

Sunlight readability for individuals who might adventure into the wilderness on occasion is reasonably satisfactory. At maximum brightness the screen ought to still be readable. The Wind is a great deal brighter than the Dell D630 and the Lenovo T60 notebooks.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The MSI Wind really stands out with its keyboard, and taking up almost every inch of the surface creating the biggest achievable keys on such a small device. The keyboard takes all but 2-3mm of area going side to side, and is really fantastic to type on even with larger hands. The single sizeable problem I can locate with the keyboard is the super narrow ",", ".", and "/" keys which are 2/3 the width of standard letter keys. The shift keys on both sides ought to have been condensed in size by half and still been completely fine, and you wouldn't have to have 2/3 size symbol keys.

The touchpad is somewhat recessed from the palmrest by just about 1mm, giving a defined lip around the complete perimeter. For small touchpads this can be very handy, letting you keep your finger inside the detection zone, and not constantly slipping out by mistake. As far as touchpads are concerned, the sensitivity is ideal, letting you slide your finger along with no too much pressure for ideal tracking. At times the predetermined vertical and horizontal scrollbars took away from that perfection, making the mouse change direction far from the intended path, but with a a small amount of adjustments the problem was fixed. The touchpad buttons consist of a single see-saw bar, with shallow response and a semi-soft click.

The ASUS Eee PC 901 had a Hybrid Engine that allowed you to overclock the Intel Atom CPU for a boost in power, I really wanted to see what the MSI Turbo feature can do. Individuals who managed to acquire pre-release models of the MSI Wind saw gains using it, but as chance would have it MSI pulled this element out before they began shipping to consumers. The FN+F10 overclocking quality is no more, and replaced with a simple "ECO feature" that changes between battery saver mode at 800MHz and normal mode which dynamically switches between 800MHz and 1600MHz depending on CPU load.

The Performance

System performance--with significant help from the Intel Atom processor--was good. Start-up times into Windows XP were on par with many full-size notebooks, and casual use programs opened up lacking any lag. The subnotebook experience is basically identical to what you would discover on a regular notebook, minus the gaming or fast photo editing. Programs like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Pidgin, Word, and Excel all open up just as fast and work just as well as you would expect on a current PC.

Items that fall into a more intensive class like Gimp, Gaming, or 720p video content did average as well. Gimp worked great for basic photo editing, but some tasks took much longer than they did on my Core 2 Duo system. Gaming and the HD video content played anywhere between 1-5FPS and were pretty bad. The Wind just doesn't have the horsepower for really intensive activities.

High Definition video playback is not really doable on the Intel Atom CPU as well as select movies. Most sources have bitrates that are too much for the CPU to carry out when decoding, and I barely broke over 6-8FPS throughout my video collection. Regular 480P video played just fine, so all hope was not lost. It will probably take a sizeable speed increase or new video chipset before these subnotebooks can handle HD content without lagging.

While the Wind doesn't have the low latency SSD benefit of the Eee PC, it does win with its higher overall transfer speeds with the spinning drive. Wind users additionally have an advantage with practically quadruple the storage space, and an simple and low-priced upgrade available.

The Wind's Upgradability

At this time any upgrade further than switching the battery for one with a bigger size will void your warranty. For individuals who consent that risk, popping open the bottom half of the MSI isn't that difficult at all. Remove all the exposed screws on the underside (including the one under the warranty void sticker), and with the aid of a fingernail around the perimeter to discharge the plastic clips.

I found it easier to unlatch the rear portion first, pick up the left side, and wiggling the right side free. To open up the VGA port on the right side you need to slide the underside half in that direction, instead of lifting directly up. Once the plastic shell is removed you have ample access to any element that could be switched out. This includes the wireless card, 2.5" SATA hard drive, and adding on extra RAM to the free DDR2 slot. The built-in 1GB of RAM is soldered onto the motherboard, so you are trapped with that for the life of the subnotebook, but the free RAM slot does offer some increase possiblities.

The Battery Life

At present merely the 3-cell battery version of the MSI Wind is shipping, and I would barely call the Wind travel friendly due of it. At lowest screen brightness and the CPU sheltered in ECO mode, the Wind almost broke 3 hours with wireless enabled but no action taking place. While you turned the backlight brightness up to reasonable levels which range between 60-70% and leave the CPU in the normal mode, battery life plummeted to 2 hours and 6 minutes under "normal" conditions. This includes intense web browsing, installing a small application, and viewing images off of a memory card. For something a business user would like to take with him or her on the road, this is unacceptable, even compared with gaming notebooks.

At what time the 6-cell battery starts shipping as a standard item, my outlook would adjust as you might be able to break 4-5 hours depending on usage since the battery is twice the size. This is basically the lone option for road warriors, above and beyond packing an AC adapter and extension cord at all times to obtain outlet access.