MSI have just released pricing details for the Wind, and it’s looking very good. Americans will get the 10″ Wind on the 3rd of June, featuring a 1024×600 LCD, an 80GB HDD, a 1.3 megapixel webcam and a six-cell battery specced for 5.5 hours of life, along with Intel’s new Atom processor. If you want the Linux version with 512MB of RAM, the price will only be $399. You’ll pay an astonishing $150 premium for XP and an extra half-gig of RAM though for the Windows flavor, which costs $549. Just slap Ubuntu on the damn thing and save yourself a couple bills.
Despite its gauche white plastic shell, the MSI Wind subnotebook may have just ripped the lashing, fluid-spurting spine out of the Asus Eee’s market share and become the subnotebook to beat. A subnotebook that costs less than $400 and has six hours of battery life? Sold.
MSI unveils pricing, launch date for Wind laptop [Tech Report]
Image: Crunchgear
“Um, aren’t we forgetting why subnotebooks failed on the first go-around? Have people’s hands gotten smaller? Has their eyesight gotten any better (mine hasn’t)?”
Yeah, the EEE’s keyboard is almost unusable for me, and I have relatively small fingers (I feel like Robert Deniro in “Raging Bull” half the time). My 11 year old could probably type on it comfortably…on the other hand, people seem to get past that since it has what subnotebooks didn’t have the first go-around …. wifi.
The HP has a bigger keyboard but apparently heat issues that should be ameliorated if/when they do an update with Intel’s atom.
RE: The battery life; Let me be skeptical. We’ve been lied to about the battery life of other UMPC / subnotes before, and once bitten, lots shy.
Bardfin, absolutely agreed. But usually they don’t lie up to 6 hours. They say 3-4 when they mean 1.5-2. Optimistically, I’m hoping this means we’ll get 4 from a Wind.
Um, aren’t we forgetting why subnotebooks failed on the first go-around? Have people’s hands gotten smaller? Has their eyesight gotten any better (mine hasn’t)?
$399 for a subnotebook that costs less than $400 is rather pricey, relatively speaking.
Mappq, christ, thanks for spotting that. Yeesh! What ugly phrasing. The remnants of a revision, no doubt.
This sounds promising, though the main appeal of the EEE for me is the fast boot time.
I wonder how moddable this is? Is the keyboard bigger than the EEE’s? When are they going to give these damn things touch screens?
Stratosfyr, the keys are actually a bit bigger than the EEE’s, I’ve read. Do you have any reason to think the boot time on the Linux flavor would be slow?
Digging a few links deeper, it looks like you also get Bluetooth capability for your $150 premium, as it’s not included in the Linux model.
I’m definitely interested in this, though I secretly wish Apple would release a sub notebook. (not the MBA, sillies)
The $400 version comes with a battery that lasts 2.5 hours.
@John, at least part of the reason the EEE has fast boot time (reputedly) is because of the solid-state flash drive. This has a hard disk instead. It might still be fast, but 22 seconds? Maybe not. Guess we’ll see
I think Stratosfyr is more than right: a great part of the EEE’s fast boot time is due to the SSD. In fact, you can find movies comparing it to the Everex Cloudbook (having 30GB HDD) with gOS flavor. It takes 2-3 minutes for Cloudbook to boot.