MSI Wind Atom Powered Mini Notebook – Unashamedly Designed to Steal Asus Eee’s Thunder

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Following on from the phenomenal success of Asus’s Eee series of mini notebooks we’ve seen a host of contenders vie for a slice of the (extremely lucrative) action and, of them all, whilst we have developed a particular soft spot for Hewlett-Packard’s Mini-Note, it looks like MSI’s up and coming Wind mini notebook, apart from sporting a somewhat curious name, is going to prove hard to ignore.

Slightly larger that the Asus Eee 900 – MSI’s 1.6GHz Atom powered offering is 1.4” wider and 0.5” deeper than the Eee 900 – and around 0.5lb heavier, MSI’s Wind sports specifications that have all to apparently been conjured with Asus’s offering in mind. It offers 1024 x 600 desktop resolution (via either 8.5” or Eee beating 10” display sizes – though a 10″ display Eee is rumored), 1GB of integrated RAM (in the case of the Win XP model), WiFi, Ethernet and 3x USB ports, integrated 4-in-1 card reader though, as opposed to sporting SSD (Solid State Drive) based storage, MSI’s Wind comes with a somewhat more traditional 2.5” SATA drive offering 80GB capacity. Naturally, MSI’s Wind will also come with either Windows XP or Linux operating systems preinstalled dependant on model with Bluetooth connectivity only making an appearance on the XP based machine.

Admittedly, if forced to decide between the MSI Wind, Asus Eee 900 and HP’s Mini-Note we would still probably opt for the HP device which, whilst offering a smaller screen size than MSI’s 10” Wind (HP’s device comes with just a 8.5” display) does sport a keyboard that’s merely 8% smaller than standard notebook keyboards and, having tried (and failed dismally) to type on the Eee with my less than dainty fingers this is certainly a major deciding factor – though we also prefer the aesthetics of the Mini-Note. (As a side note, we would be extremely interested to hear which, of these three mini-notebooks, you would opt for and why).

MSI’s Wind is set for release on 3 June, will come in black, white, silver and (yes) pink and will purportedly retail for around $400 and $550 for the Novel SUSE Linux OS and Windows XP versions respectively.

[Laptop Magazine via OhGizmo]