Customer Reviews

MSI Wind PC Atom 1.6 MHz CPU Intel 945GC 1 x 200Pin Intel GMA 950 Barebone - Retail (Black)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I bought this to run Windows Home Server and it's been a very good choice for me. The unit is VERY quiet-- it has a single fan in the back of case but it is quiet. It uses little power (under 30 watts under load) so leaving it on 24/7 is not a problem. It runs cool (because the motherboard is really just a low power laptop motherboard) and takes up very little space.

Physically it is about the size of an Xbox 360, with room inside for a SATA 3.5" and a SATA 5.25" drive (the 5.25 can be a exposed via a pop-out panel so it can be a DVD-RW drive). Cables and screws are included for the SATA drives so no cables needed. The built-in Gigabit Ethernet port is perfect for a home server; it also has on-board video and sound. 6 USB 2.0 ports are externally exposed, 2 in front for mouse/keyboard and 4 in the rear (for external USB drives for example). The only thing missing is RAM (it takes a single laptop style 200pin DDR2 533MHz RAM card and you can easily find a 2Gig card for under $25 including shipping), and hard drive(s). In my case I installed a DVD-RW drive in the exposed bay however a USB DVD driver might be a better choice so that you can use that bay for another hard drive, since Windows Home Server has features that make use of multiple drives.

After the Home Server OS is installed you can remove the mouse/keyboard from the USB ports because after that all administration is done remotely and this unit will boot fine without either attached. You can certainly run Windows XP on this unit but in my case I bought it specifically to run Home Server.

Also on the motherboard is a Compact Flash (CF) slot (for OSs like Linux that can run off of a CF card, eliminating the requirement for a hard disk entirely) and a "mini PCI Express" slot (NOT a standard PCI or PCI Express slot!) mainly there to install a wireless network card (remember the motherboard is really just a laptop motherboard in a larger case).

Pros:
- Cool, quiet, very low power requirements, small cabinet
- Includes most everything you need except drives and RAM
- Onboard Gigabit ethernet, video and sound
- Plenty of USB 2.0 ports
- Sufficient drive bays for a typical home server
- Can run XP, Linux or Windows Home Server
- Well made and easy to open the cabinet to get inside

Cons:
- Only 2 drive bays, use them wisely
- No PCI or PCI Express slots so no standard add-on cards possible
- Power-on LED is a very bright blue on the front panel (cover with electrical tape or paint if necessary)

Bottom line: for what this box was intended (small space, low noise and low power requirement) it's a very nice unit. Ideal for running a smaller home server, but probably not your best choice if you plan to install more than 2 hard drives to your server -- although you could add plenty of external USB drives, that would defeat the reason for getting a small low-noise low-power case so you might be better off buying a larger cabinet instead. Very nice choice for Windows Home Server!

I got this because I was unhappy with the Asus 20g netbook I purchased.

This beastie came solidly packed in a good, strong box with a handle (which I still use to haul it around). I put in a 160gig SATA drive, 2gig of ram, and a DVD/CD burner, which took about 20 minutes.

I loaded Ubuntu Hardy Heron, which installed on the hard drive very easily, and I'm now in the process of fine-tuning the settings. I haven't had much time to test the system and add all the software updates I would like, but so far it runs very well for basic desktop functions (writing, etc.).

I found the build quality very good, the instructions more than adequate, and the ease of installation of drives very good. (Each bag of hardware for mounting drives is marked for the type of drive. Very nice.)

An extra bonus is that it uses an outboard power supply brick, which means it could very easily be battery powered.

The only problem I had was that Hardy didn't recognize the network port out of the box - but I was using an old copy, and haven't had time to redo the install with that latest version. It is clearly a software issue, not hardware, as the hardware check shows the port working quite happily. I will probably move to Ibex or a dual boot system when I have more time to play.

I am not at all interested in Windows function or performance on this as I am leaving Redmond in the dust and migrating to Linux. Open source is the clear choice for the future of good operating systems and software. This is a great little Linux box for a very reasonable price, and not tied to a proprietary (and kludgy) Linux shell like Asus' machines.

Frankly, I was surprised at the quality. I was expecting much worse, and was extremely happy to see just how good it is. A very solid little machine. MSI has definitely made me a convert from Asus.


UPDATE Jan. 31, 2009

Found the problem, it was a software issue solved by the latest version of Hardy Heron, 8.04.2. Beastie now works great and I have been trying all kinds of wonderful Ubuntu Linux software, including the cool drum machine, Hydrogen. This is definitely an outstanding computer buy. I am starting to make plans for using several of them for different functions.


UPDATE May 27, 2009:

There is now a version of this with a dual core Atom 330 for a few dollars more. I have also purchased one of those and from tests conducted by others, it is roughly 30% faster on most tasks. I would highly recommend looking at that machine as well. These are sweet little machines.

Pros:

It is what it is, small, quiet, cheap & efficient.. However for a SFF unit it is still hackable, which is very nice. I'm Using it as a net appliance, surf the web/docs... I slapped 2 gigs of Kingston RAM (got it for $28) in and the thing is lightning fast booting from a USB flash disk running Linux. Took about 10 minutes to unbox, set up, place the RAM. Up and running for under $200.

Cons:

~ the CF slot requires you to pull the motherboard.
~ vga only, no dvi.


Other Thoughts: There are so many possible uses for this device. I will get a couple to use as net appliances and media centers.

Awesome little box. I've got mine configured with 2GB of RAM and a 500GB SATA HDD running Win Server 2003. I'm using it for ftp, http, terminal services, and general file sharing around the house. Works great when I need access to a server outside my work network. Slows down a bit when loading Java and I wouldn't recommend it for any real heavy lifting or streaming media, but so far it's solid as a rock. Up for 2 months and no unexpected reboots or hang ups.

Pro:
- Small and efficient
- Snappy
- Runs Windows 7 very well
- Reasonably priced
- Card Reader

Cons:
- Has trouble with streaming full-screen video (1680x1050)
- Somewhat time-consuming to install components
- Limited upgrade potential versus a normal-sized desktop
- No PS/2 ports

My overall impression of this guy is great. I use it as a second desktop for web browsing, email, music, Hulu and file backups. Ubuntu 8.04 and 8.10 installed perfectly. I just got my hands on a copy of Windows 7 beta and it installed with all the drivers! I was very, very impressed about that. I've also tested it with Windows Server 2003 and XP... both did just fine (you'll need to use the driver CD to get started in those OS's). I haven't tried Vista, yet.

The machine is snappy... in other words, it responds quickly to most desktop tasks. What it doesn't do is work well for CPU intense activities. I don't recommend rendering your 3D videos on this thing (O RLY?). This shouldn't be shocking news to anyone, though.

I mentioned limited upgrade ability. It can only have 2 drives and there are no expansion PCI/PCMCIA slots. It only supports up to 2 GB of RAM. However, that really is a lot, considering what the machine is designed to do in the first place.

The last thing I'll offer is something that I actually had a hard time figuring out when I was comparing this to other mini-PC's... You'll need to have the following to get it to run:
- 1 200-pin DDR2 533 RAM, up to 2GB
- 1 SATA Hard Drive
- 1 SATA CD/DVD-ROM Drive (not actually required, but useful for installing your OS)
- USB Keyboard and Mouse
- Monitor

This system was easy to setup. It works great and uses low power. I put in a 1GB $13 stick of memory and a WD "green" drive. Next I installed Ubuntu Server and I'm using it as network attached storage.

I bought this unit for A) Its price and B) its power consumption. After approximately a years worth of ownership the unit crashed and was not recoverable. It now hangs at BIOS detailing of "waiting for USB controller init". Unfortunately, the box and mother board are both custom so I am left with all my components and used scrap metal. I am not saying do not buy this box, but I am saying that if you leave it on like a server as I did, be prepared for the unit show wear after a while. Its cheap folks, otherwise a great little quiet PC. BTW, no native RAID, keep that in mind.

For a home file server, consider using FreeNAS rather than paying for any M$ software and not getting anything else useful for your money. Installation is incredibly easy. Follow these straight-forward instructions:

Setup Samba Shares With FreeNAS - A 5 Minute Tutorial
[...]

FreeNAS is based on the FreeBSD operating system, *not* any Linux. However, dyed-in-the-wool Windows folks like me won't find configuring FreeNAS to be any real challenge.

After adding RAM (2GB suggested) and a hard drive, temporarily hook up a monitor and an optical drive to boot from the FreeNAS disc. Once it's loaded and you have transferred the FreeNAS OS to the hard drive it is then completely configurable from the IP you designated during setup. You can permanently remove the monitor and optical drive. From your PC you can set up SAMBA (the FreeBSD equivalent of M$ CIFS).

For another 100 bucks (RAM + hard drive) you can have a top-notch file server. Many small businesses use FreeNAS since it is so reliable. It is actually designed to support all kinds of RAID, but this is not at all necessary. I use just a single, large drive.

I purchased the MSI Wind PC to evaluate it as a thin client in a Linux Terminal Server (LTSP) environment. It worked flawlessly from the beginning with the latest version of LTSP (5.0) and continues to be my thin client choice for low-noise, cool desktops. Also, the system has enough horsepower that if you want to run local applications you can do so without worry - that is unless you are running heavy-duty graphic or CPU intensive applications.

I cannot say much about its standalone performance since I have never booted it off anything but PXE.

Hope this information helps others find excellent, inexpensive thin clients; they are hard to find these days.

I was very interested in getting a PC that was ultra portable, inexpensive, no spinning disk drive yet have basic web/email/word processing/spreadsheet wifi functionality. This product hit the bulls-eye. I'm surprised everyone doesn't get one of these. The model I purchased uses a Linux-derivative operating system with the "Open Office" appliations that has its quirks but is Windows-like enough that it's easy to get started. I've run into one important problem that I haven't resolved just yet: the network driver seems to have evaporated from the system so I'm not able to access the network right now. Haven't spent much time to look into it just yet and my first contact with the MSI folks wwasn't great: Their tech support purson was clueless.