The long-awaited refresh of the MSI Wind U100, the U100 Plus, is tipped to be finally approaching shipping status, around four months since the netbook was announced. The U100 Plus takes the chassis and general specifications of the original netbook – the 10-inch 1024 x 600 display, the 160GB hard-drive and the 1GB of RAM – and swaps out the Atom N270 processor for the slightly faster 1.66GHz N280 chip.
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.
We’ve not heard much regarding MSI’s Wind U200, their first CULV ultraportable, since we saw it fondled on video back in May, but the 12-inch notebook seems finally to be showing up for pre-order. German online retailer notebook.de are listing the U200 – which uses Intel’s 1.3GHz Pentium US2700 processor – for €629 ($906).
Acer and ASUS are tipped to have frozen new netbook launches in the second half of 2009, in response to Intel’s decision to postpone the launch of the Pine Trail-M platform – of which the Atom N450 processor is a part – until Q1 2010. As part of that, Acer’s dual-booting Android/Windows XP netbook has been postponed with no known launch date; the netbook, first shown in prototype form at Computex in June, was most recently expected to arrive in August.
We just talked about the new Classic series of notebooks from MSI last week. The company introduced the 14-inch CR400 model, as you might remember and they’ve revealed two new 16-inch models: the CX600 and the CR600.
MSI have announced a new video card, the R4890 Cyclone SOC, which brings together ATI’s 1GHz HD 4890 core with 800 stream processors and 1GB of GDDR5 256-bit memory. Since cooling all that takes some effort, there’s also a huge 10cm fan with four 8mm heatpipes. That makes for the biggest fan on an HD 4890-based video card to date, and a setup which MSI claim is far quieter than rival systems.
Of all of MSI’s X-Slim series of ultraportables, the X600 has been perhaps the most mysterious. All that looks set to change, however, as the first review units start to slip out: NewGadgets.de have acquired one, and recorded a full hands-on of the 24.5mm thick notebook together with a comparison to the X340.
Video hands-on after the cut
MSI is gearing up to add another notebook to their Entertainment series with the EX460. This notebook measures in at 14-inches and features an LED-backlit display along with the 512MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4330 graphics card.
After the MSI X-Slim X340’s recent frankly awful review, we’ve been waiting for a third-opinion and hopefully some indication that the ultraportable’s poor showing was a one-off aberration. Unfortunately, many of the critique points from that review – poor build quality, “cheap and nasty” trackpad and “tacky” keyboard – also crop up in NotebookReview’s piece.
SlashGear Japan
