The MSI Wind U210 is one of the most powerful and inexpensive netbooks you can buy. It has an extremely large (for netbook standards) 12.1″ screen and powerful hardware, all for $419. Here are the full specs:
- 1.6GHz AMD Athlon processor
- 2GB RAM (upgradeable to 8GB)
- 250GB 5400rpm hard drive
- 12.1″ 1366 x 768 display
- ATI Radeon 1270 graphics
- 802.11 b/g/n wireless
- Vista home premium OS
- HDMI out, 1.3mp webcam
- 3 lbs
As you can see these specs are very impressive. It has the AMD processor which is not that impressive, but has 2GB of RAM (instead of the usual 1GB) and is upgradeable to 8GB (instead of the usual 2GB).
The fullsize keyboard is very nice, and the touchpad is nice and large with 2 seperate buttons instead of the “unibutton”.
It also comes with a nice 250GB hard drive and HDMI out, which has no problem outputting HD movies with the Radeon graphics card. With the speed and hardware capabilities this netbook could be combined with a nice large display as a desktop replacement. To do this you will definitely want to wipe Vista and put on Windows 7, which will knock the boot time down to around 20 seconds.
The sides have the normal ports, including VGA out, HDMI out, and 3 usb’s.
If you put 8GB of RAM in this bad boy along with a fresh install of Windows 7 Home premium you will have yourself one of the baddest netbooks out there, along with the biggest display.
And all of this is available for only $419 from Amazon.
PRO:
- dual core AMD processor – windows 7 ultimate runs very smooth
- ATI card is weak but does run some games and perfect HD video
Screen is bright, nice size and decent viewing angle, just not for outdoors.
- good function key and LED arrangement for controlling hardware devices like sound, screen etc.
- good value for the money
- runs a lot of apps normal netbooks won’t run, even autocad 2010
CON:
- loose battery, heavy, sticks way out the bottom
- left side of the palm rest / keyboard gets hot
- missing face recognition software also unavailable to download
- keyboard could be better, flat surface keys mimic fullsize keys, but are not pleasant for touch typing, prone to typos.
- can’t default the touch-pad to off on startup, so you have to remember to disable it on every single bootup, or suffer through random cursor movements and jumbled text.
I bought one of these in the Philippines, being unable to find any laptops with decent new graphics cards here… The Philippines appear to get special pared down versions of laptops that all use the crummy intel graphics chips.
This is the only Netbook I’ve ever seen with dual core cpu and (any form of) ATI graphics.
Amazingly, this plays World of Warcraft with 20-30 fps, but expect to loose 10fps in raids. Also runs EVE-Online and Pirates of the Burning Sea, although the latter doesn’t look that great with everything turned down.
The hot exhaust on the left side gets a little annoying, and the left edge of the keyboard gets pretty warm.
The battery is heavy and sticks out the bottom quite a bit. Further, the attachment mechanism for this battery is far too loose! Picking up the unit can disconnect the battery and inadvertently shut off your running computer.
The face recognition software promised in the advertising is missing and can’t be downloaded from MSI’s website. I only found some blurb of an experimental version for XP only.
Conclusion: even though the battery annoys me, the unit runs windows 7 very well as well as lots of things you couldn’t run at all on a standard netbook.
Still can’t wait to get home to my far better keyboard.
P.S. The warranty service from the MSI dealer here consisted of putting sticky tape into the battery slot. Its still loose, but now I have the added benefit of a sticky mess in the battery slot.
There’s a slotted area on the sides of the battery compartment, that’s supposed to hold the battery, but the slot is simply too wide to hold it properly. Someone in case manufacturing must have written down a wrong measurement or something