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5.0 stars
"Excelent, one of the best NetBooks, or the best"
Pros: Fast
Runs cool
Low noise
Very bright LCDCons: None for a NetBook or standard laptop
Summary: First impression
Got mine today - MSI Wind U100 with 2GB RAM. Let me first add that I use it as a desktop computer, with mouse, keyboard and monitor atached.
Mechanical:
Looks good, seems solid, nice design, somewhat impressive for this price. Status lamps are placed at the edge of the base for you to see also when the lid is closed - good - especially when used as desk-top computer. Connections are all placed on the sides - good and bad. Good that the USB connectors and 4-in-1 are placed for easy plugin, not at the back fumbling around. Bad for the VGA and power connectors, quite unpractical. They have to rethink the layout of the mainboard. I would like to see 2 USB at the back panel, and 2 at the sides. I would like to see the on-off button outside.
Display:
Impressive, the LED backlight gives a bright picture, aslo in bright daylight. The LED backlight is in my opinion a key issue, sets all non-LED netbooks on the sideline. This realy gives you some thaughts when comparing with the good old LCD monitor. The LCD of the Acer C110 has a faded patina compared with this MSI.
Install:
Fast and with no problems. Finally a machine whichs comes relativly clean, instead of the usual bunch of sw packages which you havnt asked for, but is installed even you want it or not. Good !
Uses XP, not Vista - good !! Was plannning to put Windows 2000 prof on, but now I will reconsider this - well dual boot just to check and play, but think it will create more problems than it solves - this is not final though. If you look for more computing power, W2K prof might be the solution, perhaps combined with overclocking.
HDD:
Nice 160GB HDD, very good. There are a lot of discusions regarding SS disks contra traditional HDD. To understand the problematics in a SS, you need to understand the flash technology. Unlike the RAM memory which you can read and write as you like, a byte in the flash chip can only be written once, then you have to erase it by a special embedded routine which takes time. A single byte cant be erased, you must erase a full block of 64Kb at a time. This requires sophisticated driver to manage, there are special flash drivers managing which bytes have been written, which bytes are "dirty", and which are ready for writing. Once in a while the disk gets filled up with bytes which are dirty and needs to be erased, and the driver performs a "garbage collection", moving data around and formatting the sector ( like disk fragmenting ). If the SS disk is full or above 60% this gets a quite timeconsuming task, since you have less and less space to work in, garbage collection is happening more and more frequent, till when its 90% full, you cant write on the disk without performing a garbagecollection. With this knowledege, its easy to conclude, that the good old HDD is supirior to the SS. SS is used for storing data, not ment to be a working disk. Soon - well they said that for years now - we will se a new type of high capacity FRAM which has the ability to remember the data when power is removed, but acts like a RAM.
Optical drive:
Do we need optical drives in the year 2009 - the world is going SS and vinyl, CD and DVD is the past, old technology. All programs are now baught and downloaded from the net, when did you last time buy a program on a physical media ? XP is on the HDD for system recovery, no need for a install CD/DVD here. My standard programs, like Partition Magic, W2K Prof etc, are all on USB keys. USB keys is today a cheap media, you get them every where as gifts, part of the package, second hand ... Backup I make on a 500GB USB HDD ( well the paranoied count of two HDD backups ). No fooling around finding a CD/DVD ( down to the shop ). Even it has LAN connection this seems to be slower and more compliated than just turn on the external HDD box using the USB connection.
Heat and noise:
Heat no problem, no need of heat guns and other temperature measuring equipment - just put your hand on, it runs quite cool -less than hand temperature. As I normally run it with the NetBook closed, the inside/keyboard temperature is higher than normal, a bit above hand temperature.
Fan noise. Its on all the time and you hear it. I baught this MSI as the reviews said its very quiet - not for me. Comparing with the Acer C110 from 2003 which is grave silent, no fan, its a dissapointment that they in the year of 2009 still cant make silent portables. I can live with it - move it away from the desk - but for those who use it as a netbook, this might be an issue - even its better than other netbooks in terms of noise, dosnt mean it makes it a good one in terms of noise. Either you hear the fan or not. You could say that this disadvantage gives an advantage in reliability and product life. The static on fan lowers the overall temperature in the unit, the higher you stress a electronical device temperature whise, the shorther product life. Called the bathtop curve.
- 1 reply to this review
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For the current price ($239 refurb'd) this might be the best value-for-dollar netbook on the market.
