Thanks to Expansys last week, the UK prices and specs for the MSI Wind were revealed but the only US prices we had until now were import prices. Today, LAPTOP magazine has revealed the US-local specs and pricing and rather than charging similar prices for both the Linux and Windows versions of the Wind as in the UK, the MSI US marketing team are choosing to offer an Eee PC 900 12G (Linux) competitor at $399 with the 80GB drive, 512MB and Novell SUSE Linux. If you want XP you’ll be paying $150 more and getting an additional 512MB into the build. It doesn’t seem to be worth $150 but there could be additional specifications that haven’t been revealed through the LAPTOP magazine article. I’ve been using Suse Linux for about 8 years and have always been very happy with the desktop interface and the ‘YAST’ system management tools. I even ran it on my work-supplied Pentium 1Ghz notebook with 512MB RAM for 2 years and only went back to Windows when I started getting into UMPCs. [more after the break]
The launch availability date of June 3rd is surprisingly early. It points towards a Day-1 Computex launch with immediate availability which could indicate a mix-up between launch and availability dates. If it really is available in early June it will be great because it will give us an earlier-than-expected indicator as to what improvements we could expect on other Atom-based netbooks. Battery life is the important benchmark to focus on here and in the article, MSI are saying that XP will return 6 hours on the 6-cell battery with Linux returning an even better figure. For a 6-cell battery with an estimated 60whr capacity, that’s not bad compared to the average notebook PC but its not much better than devices based on the original Origami 2006 ultra mobile PC specifications. As we explained before, devices built on the Diamondville variant of Atom won’t make any major advances in battery life.
Laptop magazine got the information through an interesting interview with MSI so be sure to hop over and read the article.
Source:Laptop Magazine.
Via JKKMobile.
This will definitely have an edge on the market, since Asus is struggling with getting the EEE 900 out with the VIA, let alone the Atom.
Definitely going to pick this one up.
I am Totally getting this, Period.
I am a college student in my sixth yr. I have been looking at the eee pc like laptops. the other day, i spotted eee pc 7″ in the dining area. It was cute and all, but It was too small. I’m not just talking about the screen, I’m talking about the keyboard which I am planning to use for programming or typing notes. It’s a joke for me. This one, on the other side is very Enticing. I’m ofcourse gonna get the linux version and add 2GB og ram. 1gb of ram of the xp version will get tossed anyways because of the more likely case of one slot for ram. Don’t care too much about bluetooth, and the extra battery should always be cheaper if bought alone. for the OS, I have an extra XP license available. I also have the option since the 80gb, to install ubuntu on a separate partition. Bring on the compiz-Fusion effects to class, way to distract the cuties sitting behind me. Heck I can apply to be an MSI rep and sell these oncampus.
Brady, The EeePC 900 has a 900MHz Celeron-M not a VIA CPU.
If the performance is OK (can play YouTube and other video smoothly) and battery life is confirmed (and does not extend the device to quite the extreme as the HP Mininote, this device has a good chance of being a success. It’s basically a $750 HP 2133 for $200 less…
The interview says it will have the 1.6Ghz Atom. And Windows XP. But this isn’t possible, according to the news a day or so ago as to what Microsoft’s definition of a ULCPC is. That information said that, among other things, a ULCPC must have a CPU of less than 1Ghz.
So what’s going on? How are MSI able to supply Windows XP on this beyond the end of June?
Sorry, PJE, it was late. It’s HP with the VIA processors and Eees with the Celeron-M’s – I’m getting them backwards.
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the design of the MSI Wind is similar to the basic netbooks you can find around. the price point of this netbook is cheaper than acer or dell netbooks ~