I hope you had a great Thanksgiving and weren’t too shopped out yesterday! If you still have shopping to do for Christmas, we have some seen some cool gear over the last week that might be worth a look. The Sony Ericsson Kurara has been reviewed and the verdict is that the device needs to be cheap to succeed. We reviewed the Nokia Booklet 3G this week. The final verdict was that the machine is underpowered and outperformed by first generation netbooks.
MSI have outed their latest X-Slim ultraportable, and they’ve slipped in an AMD processor rather than the usual Intel fare. The MSI X-Slim X430 gets AMD’s Athlon Neo X2 CPU and an ATI Mobility Radeon HD3200 GPU, together with 2GB of memory, a 14-inch 1366 x 768 16:9 display and choice of 320GB or 500GB hard-drives. In keeping with the X-Slim range’s skinny ethos, it measures 24.5mm thick.
MSI has been launching lots of new notebooks over the last few days and today the company has announced a new notebook called the X410. The X410 is a new addition to the X-Slim 14-inch notebook family. The thin little notebook promises good performance with the latest AMD ultrathin platform.
After the numerous MSI X-Slim models and the sneak teaser of Dell’s upcoming 9.99mm-thick Adamo XPS, we’re actually a little bored of would-be MacBook Air clones. Unfortunately that news obviously hasn’t reached China, because there the fakery continues apace; today’s model is from Hua Yi, a 12-inch ultraportable that the Google translation tells us is called “Little White One”.
The MSI X-Slim X600 hasn’t been a stranger to these parts and neither has the X610, and if you thought those screenshots, reviews, and unboxing videos were just enough to pull you over to the realm of purchasing, then by all means, go right ahead. The MSI has officially gone up for purchase on the mega-online retailer Amazon, with current shipping only to the United States.
MSI have prepared another AMD variant of an existing Intel model, in the shape of the Wind U210. The 12.1-inch thin-and-light notebook is based on the MSI Wind U200, but switches that machine’s Intel CULV processor for one from AMD’s Yukon range. Two models will kick off the new U210 series, the MSI Wind U210-002 with the AMD Athlon Neo NV-40 1.6GHz CPU, 1GB of RAM and a 160GB HDD, and the Wind U210-010 with the same CPU, 2GB of RAM and a 250GB HDD.
It’s perhaps a fact of life that with age comes a paunch, but who would’ve thought the MSI X-Slim X340 would go from toned ultraportable to tubby laptop so quickly? The company have been showing off their updated model, which gets a girth increase thanks to a new, extended 8-cell battery intended to address complaints about poor runtimes.
It may look like MSI’s X-Slim X600, but this is actually the company’s unannounced X-Slim X610. Ostensibly the same as its early cousin, the X610 differs in switching from Intel’s Core 2 Solo SU3500 processor to AMD’s 1.6GHz Athlon MV-40 CPU. According to Russian site 3DNews’ review, this cheaper processor will hopefully bring down the whole cost of the X610.
With official photos, full specifications, an unboxing and demo video behind us, all that’s left for MSI’s X-Slim X600 – before a post eventually saying it’s been retired, of course – is a full review. Happily LaptopMag are on hand to deliver just that, putting the 15.6-inch CULV ultraportable through its paces to see if it’s more than just good looks or falls flat like its smaller X340 sibling.
Intel has continued its attempts to coax the industry into CULV (consumer ultra-low voltage) so-called “ultra-thin” notebooks rather than netbooks, highlighting the shortcomings of the latter devices which, ironically, are generally based on the company’s own Atom N270 processor. Speaking during Intel’s earnings conference call on Tuesday, CEO Paul Otellini described ultra-thins as “an affordable notebook that has more functionality [than a netbook].”
SlashGear Japan
