MSI Refreshes Wind Netbooks, Faces Tough Competition

From DailyTech: Micro-Star International (MSI) is known among enthusiasts for its graphics card designs and motherboards. However, the Taiwan-based OEM makes a variety of other products including servers and barebones PCs. Among its most successful entries outside the component market has been the MSI Wind, a netbook.

Now MSI has refreshed its popular design, releasing a new version, the MSI Wind U135. The specs on the netbook are pretty standard -- Windows 7, 1 GB of DDR2 RAM, a 160 GB or 250 GB HD, a choice of several colors (Silver, Charcoal, Ruby and Sapphire). The netbook's new ECO engine features five modes -- Gaming, Movie, Presentation, Document and Turbo Battery -- which help conserve power.

What is important about the new design is that it sports a brand new type of Intel Atom processor, which Intel codenamed Pine Trail and announced on December 21. The new processor, the Intel Atom N450 drops power consumption from 11.8 W to 7 W for the entire kit (including integrated graphics).

A shortcoming of the platform is that unlike NVIDIA's Ion and Tegra products, it does not have HD graphics built in. Integrated graphics on the platform are driven by the Intel GMA 3150, a 45 nm die-shrink of Intel's ubiquitous GMA 3100 chip.

The MSRP is $309.99 for the 3 cell variant and $329.99 for the 6 cell variant with 160 GB and 250 GB hard drives, respectively. This makes it cheaper than most of the Eee PCs currently offered, though one Pine Trail Eee PC (the white 1001P) is retailing for $299 on Newegg.com (it has a 160 GB HD).

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