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| Customer Reviews: | | Average Customer Review: ( 20 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
33 of 34 found the following review helpful:
 Superb Notebook! Sep 25, 2008
By David C. Leaumont
"Dave"
What a superb laptop! Tiny in size, yet the screen is large enough to be very usable. The system comes with a 5400 rpm 80GB SATA Western Digital Scorpio hard drive, which is nice. The nicer part about the hard drive is that it is easily upgraded. I upgraded mine to a 250 GB 7200 rpm Seagate which swapped in without a hitch. It also comes with 1 GB DDR2 RAM, and has an extra slot that can hold up to a second 1 GB stick. Unfortunately, anything larger than a 1GB stick will cause the computer to not POST.
The screen resolution is limited to 1024 x 600, which is very usable, but it would be nice if it had options to go to a higher resolution to mitigate the size. Some applications are too large at this resolution to use with ease due to the increased need to scroll up and down.
The laptop is actually smaller than my day planner. And, the weight is low, but the laptop does not feel cheap. The hinges were something I worried about before buying the laptop, as my previous laptop had a hinge problem. But, the hinges are strong.
The ports on the laptop are very convenient with the exception of the power connection. It is on the side of the laptop, and with the small width of the laptop makes the power connection vulnerable to wear and tear when you use the laptop on anything other than a table-like surface. USB ports are USB 2.0, and there are three. The VGA port works well.
The laptop's sound a bit anemic, but that is standard for most laptops.
The keyboard is slightly smaller than a normal keyboard, but nowhere near as small as the Asus Eee keyboard. It's easy to move from a regular sized keyboard and back from the MSI without having errant keystrokes from muscle memory issues. There is an interesting function that allows some of the keys to be locked into a number keypad, but the keys are not labeled, so it is difficult to use. But, it is a feature that the keyboard allows.
The mouse could use a little work. The left/right click button is a single bar that see-saws back and forth. The plastic hear is cheap, and it bends over time. It is still functional after a month, and is a minor detail, but MSI could have done better.
I bought the 3-cell battery version, as that was all that was available at the time, and MSI was affected by the battery shortage. I get about 2 to 2.5 hours out of the 3 cell running several applications (large hdd usage). Not bad.
The key issue with the MSI is that there are many sites out there that cater to the MSI Wind and altering the software and hardware. Users have even modified Mac OS X (10.5.4) to optimize it for installation on the Wind. I currently have a dual boot Win XP (default OS) and Mac OS X (buy a license if you do so.)
The laptops comes with a bag which unfortunately will not fit the power supply.
There is no CD/DVD drive, of course, due to the size, but there are plenty of small external USB drives out there.
The car reader is something I have yet to use, but many online have mentioned using it to load OSes or software, as it is a bootable drive. In fact, the BIOS allows for a host of bootable drive options, which is nice.
When comparing this to the Asus Eee, two things drove me to the MSI Wind - 1) the full sized keyboard on the MSI and 2) the SATA drive that performs better than the solid state drive on the Asus.
A superb laptop! I highly recommend it if you want something very portable.
20 of 20 found the following review helpful:
Geek Love Sep 26, 2008
By S. Lesser
I'm a fan of the netbook concept. When I first saw the Asus EEE 4G I bought it on sight and never looked back at my old laptops...
Well, at least until the novelty wore off. After awhile the 7" screen and tiny keyboard drove me nuts. The EEE had a special place in my heart, but it was hardly practical. I fortunately sold it before the new crop of Atom-based processors came out, still hoping for a future machine that would "get it right."
The MSI Wind gets it right. The screen is just the right size, the battery life is terrific, build quality is solid, and the keyboard is a joy to use. After evaluating everything from the Acer Aspire One, the 901 and 1000 series Asus EEEs, all the way to the Dell Mini 9 (which I ordered -- and canceled after trying the Wind), this is the clear winner.
From a geek perspective, this is a fun machine to mod. I upgraded RAM to 2GB ($20), bought a new 250GB Scorpio hard drive on Amazon ($80), and then created a dual-boot Windows XP and OS X Leopard machine... Yeah, that's right, this baby runs the Mac OS like a dream. Do a search for MSIWindosX.iso and read up if you're so technically inclined. After replacing the internal wireless with a surplus Dell card that has a Mac-recognized Broadcom chip($15), I've got the only-to-be-dreamed-of 10", sub-3lb. MacBook that Apple never made... Much cheaper than the compromise of the Air.
Note: making this a Mac breaks the license of the OS X EULA. It also requires a fair bit of technical savvy.
9 of 9 found the following review helpful:
Excellent Netbook Oct 11, 2008
By catbird
This little netbook is wonderful. I bought it to web surf and read email and it's perfect for that. It is light weight, has long battery life, and easily moves from room to room with me.
I have wanted a system like this ever since the EEE PCs came out a couple of years ago, but I didn't think a 7" screen was big enough. So, this year when the larger 9" and 10" screens were announced I eagerly kept track of each system as it was unveiled, read the reviews, and also read the comments of folks as they bought the various netbooks.
When the Wind was announced I was pretty much hooked. I've used MSI's motherboards for years and have been very happy with their products. The Wind had everything I wanted hardware-wise with an Atom processor, 10" non-shiny screen (I tried a 9" netbook in a store and decided I wanted the larger screen size), 1GB ram, decent-sized hard disk drive (I had decided I didn't want SSD as I could put that in later), bluetooth, 1.3mp camera, 6 cell battery, etc.
By the end of the Summer my choices had come down to the Wind or Lenovo's S10. What eventually made me buy the Wind were things that might seem innocuous, but are important to me as I would be using this netbook on a daily basis. The reviews said it ran really cool and it had a fairly standard keyboard layout (on other netbooks the right shift is in an odd place and this matters to me as I am a fast touch typist). In addition, there is a robust user community (msiwind.net) and someone has already written up the instructions (and problems) for installing the version of Linux I plan to ultimately use. Also, it looks to me like it is not difficult to do hardware upgrades on the Wind.
I am sure the other netbooks are fine products, but I have no regrets and am delighted with my purchase.
7 of 7 found the following review helpful:
Cool netbook for students! Oct 03, 2008
By Jun Chua
Bought this Wind netbook as a present for my daughter. I did the set up before i handed it to her to make sure that everything are working. Setting up this netbook is swift as a breeze. Everything works as specified by the manufaturer when it arrived. No problems on bluetooth, wireless (wifi) networking connection, booting up is fast. By the way, you can free up more HDD space by burning the system recovery file to a CD or DVD disc, but you will need a usb cd or dvd writer in order to do this. After this, I've installed the MS Student with Encarta for my daughter reference, and she loved it very much. Battery is excellent with 6 cell, it last for almost 5 1/2 hours during full charge. Definitely, you won't feel sorry to have this netbook for your students.
6 of 6 found the following review helpful:
Perfect Ultra-portable Laptop Oct 11, 2008
By T. Wang
Affordable, light weight, long battery life, great performance, bright screen, comfortable keyboard, easily upgradable, what's else can you expect from a perfect ultra-portable machine like this one?
See all 20 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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