Customer Reviews

MSI Wind U100-053US 10-Inch Mini Laptop (1.6 GHz Intel Atom Processor, 1 GB RAM, 80 GB Hard Drive, XP Home, 6 Cell Battery) Black

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

THE MSI "WIND" has been a super investment. I recently traveled through eastern Europe (Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, & Romania), The WIND was a constant companion enjoying connections with Wi-Fi, thus access to my web accounts. The keyboard is easy to use as the size is almost as large as a standard computer, the screen is clear, and the mouse has good response. But I did miss the scroll-wheel. I purchased the long-life (6-hour) battery that turned out a good investment since re-charging overseas presents some obstacles. I downloaded digital photos along the way, freeing my camera chips for more extraordinary captures during travels. Yes, I am most pleased with my WIND purchase. Thanks.

Very fine small computer, 5 plus hour battery life makes it mobile,
good screen. Shipment as specified, well packed.
No manuals with product, just recovery disks. Manuals are online.

I've been using this MSI wind for two weeks now and love it. Fast, sleek and cool looking. Not a big geek but use it for writing, I can't say enough good things about it. Comes with almost no software so you'll need to buy that once you get it.

What can I say? I have been in the market for netbook for a while and after constant research and comparing I went with the MSI Wind U100. It barely beat out the mini from Dell that I was going to choose as the extra 2 inches in screen real estate made we go with the MSI. All I can really say is that this little guy can pretty much process anything my Dell 15.4" laptop Latitude (2 gig RAM) can do. The display is fantastic (bright), the keyboard layout is functional and the battery life (6 Cell Version) is adequate enough for basic laptop duties. One drawback is the pointer keypad right-left button which seems too small and is one piece, its easy to miss and press the wrong buttom at times. The WiFi seems too at times to lose itself for no reason but this is very not often. I kept Win XP on it and it has run pretty much run every program I have installed on it. It's light weight makes its so easy to carry and take anywhere. It is now my main workhorse PC at the office. It will do what it was made for and do it well. It is good deal in my view.

I bought this netbook for the sole reason of taking notes during classes. It's small and comes with its own soft case which makes it perfect for sliding in a bag whenever you think you may need it. It's light so you can barely notice you're carrying it around. I got the 6-cell battery and it is awesome having 5.5 to 6 hours of battery life on one charge.

The wind also has the ability to run a couple older games. I spend a lot of class times playing Starcraft or Warcraft 4. The built in blue tooth allows me to just turn on my mouse and it's working.

The one negative I have with it is the trackpad. MSI pulled the old bait and switch by starting by selling touchpads by sentillic, a well known touch pad maker which had the side scroll on it (drag your finger down the right side of the pad to scroll pages). Now they are shipping these with a less known brand of touch pad, and due to patents can't include the drag scroll method. One other quarrel I have with the touch pad is that the physical right and left click is on the same bar. They are not separate buttons.