MSI Wind - A mini-laptop with a screen that doesn't suck

The result is the MSI Wind - a mini laptop for the train, park, bus, or plane, thaty takes the best bits of the Eee, and improves on them.

The good news is laptop makers like MSI are fixing two of our biggest pet peeves with mini notebooks - the crappy screens and keyboards. The MSI Wind has a 10in screen in beautiful matte finish, unlike the gloss which plagues larger machines.

The keyboard is also a joy to use (as is the keyboard on the Acer Aspire One) - which is impressive considering we're talking about a 26cm wide laptop.

We've been road testing the Wind, and our first impressions are that it's going to give the Eee a run for its money. At $699 it's also reasonably priced, though certainly not the cheapest option.

Price
At $699 the Wind matches the Acer Aspire One Windows XP model, though it's undercut by the Acer Aspire Linux machine $599 - plus Acer has a cashback offer). The Eee 901 is also slightly cheaper at $649. At the other end is the HP Mini-Note, a class act with wide screen and loads of storage, but starts at $899.

Performance
We'll have more data once we've done a full benchtest, but for now we can report the Wind is responsive, though there is a slight lag on opening applications. Bootup time was 36 seconds, verse 29 seconds for the XP Eee PC 900. Our test unit came with 1GB of memory, compared with the 1.5GB available for the Acer Aspire One XP model. The ability to add an extra 1GB would be handy, though for now we're not calling it a huge problem.

Storage
$699 gets you 80GB of hard drive storage, which is good, though you get up to 120GB with the Aspire One, and 180GB with the HP Mini-Note. There doesn't seem to be a flash option for the Wind, which is one of the few options we would have liked to have seen. This is where the Eee 901 maintains its edge, with up to 16GB.

Keyboard
RSI *should* be a thing of the past. We had no problems typing on the Wind. Hopefully ASUS is taking notice.

Screen
A 10-in screen is definitely the way to go if you're after a portable for the bus or train. We had hesitations, thinking it might be too bulky, but the extra few inches wasn't any more awkward, and Web browsing was much easier. Kudos to MSI for not choosing gloss. We’ve only played with the Aspire One briefly, but our initial impressions are that MSI has the upper hand here.

CPU
In our road test the 1.6GHz obviously had the goods to cope with XP (not difficult). The real test will be what effect it has on battery life. We're also yet to play with the Atom on a Vista machine, and while we know you'll cringe at the thought, we won't be surprised if it happens. All three Eee-class vendors (MSI, Asus, and Acer), are going with Atom, though HP is still using Via.

Battery
This is still the big Achilles heel of sub-$1,000 ultraportable, though the claims are getting impressive on paper, with Acer claiming 7 hours for the Aspire One. The good news is the Wind, like the Eee 901 and Aspire One (later this year), has a 6 cell battery option. Until we do a full battery benchtest, we'd recommend opting for the 6 cell, as all the battery times we’ve ever seen from this class of laptop so far have been woeful.

Weight
The Wind is 1Kg with a 3 cell battery, which puts it on par with the Aspire One and Eee 901 (which comes in at 1.Kg). Remember, this is less than the Apple Air, though it's still no patch on the Toshiba R500 (which also has a DVD drive).

On the design front, Alienware’s high-end gaming rigs tend to turn people on or off based on their looks alone. The design ethic of the company is pretty unique, and it is often either loved or hated; which is why we were quite surprised by this rather understated notebook design when it crossed our testbench.

In fact, it could almost be called retro in its simplicity, and where it not for the alien-head logo smack in the middle of the clam-shell you could be forgiven for thinking it’s an ancient desktop replacement from the days of yore. Flip that lid, though, and you’ll see that the design bods at Alienware are still earning their crust.

The standard notebook keyboard and fascia may not be much to look at, apart from the non-standard font gracing the keys, but turn the m15x on and it’s a whole other story. The keyboard lettering, outlines and sundry other bells and whistles light up from within. There’s even a thin strip of lighting around the entire edge of the screen bevel and the touchpad!

This might seem like excessive bling, but if you’ve ever peered at your keyboard in a dark room trying to find the B key to bandage yourself in a game, and grenned yourself to death instead with the G key, for instance, this is pretty neat. Neater still is the completely indulgent ability to tweak every lit bit of kit to one of ten or so colours, from icy blues to dangerous looking reds.

Jo, our ad gal, was very impressed with the pink lighting (I am so dead… -ed).
There’s an elegant sufficiency of ports scattered about the left and right hand sides of the m15x, and thankfully none at the rear. Of particular note is USB 2.0 ports on either side of the keyboard, and HDMI out for some hi-res output on larger screens.

Speaking of larger screens, another thing that’s obvious from the get-go is that the 15.4in screen on the m15x is, well, only a 15in screen. A lot of ‘gaming grade’ laptops plump for a 17in model – and subsequently weigh a tonne and kind of miss the point of being portable. At 15in, you still get a perfectly serviceable screen, and less lugging. An interesting choice, and one we think is a wise one in the long run.

However, all the wise choices in the world don’t add up to a hill of beans if your wisely kitted gaming lappie can’t cut the pixel mustard. With a single 8800 GTX onboard, you might expect good performance – and you wouldn’t be disappointed! Once we realised that someone had stealthily turned on the m15x’s ‘Stealth’ setting – and therefore throttled performance in favour of battery life – and got our machine purring along at maximum speed, both 3DMark06 and Crysis returned some pretty impressive scores.

The former returned a damned pleasing 9312 3DMarks, easily beating the Dell M1730 to top place, as well as managing Crysis at 1280 x 1024 and all settings turned way the hell up – averaging 12fps is no mean feat. Drop those resource-hungry settings down a notch and you’ll have even smoother gameplay, but frankly it’s more than playable on even high settings.

About the only grip we have – and it’s common one with high-end systems – is the choice of 4GB of RAM. The m15x is not running a 64-bit OS, so with the onboard video’s 512MB cutting into Vista’s allocation limit, you’re simply wasting all that RAM. 2GB would be a much more realistic figure, and cut the price a wee bit to boot.

That said, while you do pay a pretty penny for the m15x, you do at least get some serious performance, great peripherals – like the Blu-ray drive – as well as some unique lighting and bling.