MSI Wind U100 Review

Overall Rating

Incredible OS compatibility, great screen, decent speakers, good performance, good value for money, battery health

Battery life (on 3 cell model), build quality (particularly the display assembly), Sentilics touchpad (only on some models), awkward USB placement.

The configuration I have was originally a 1.6GHz Atom N270 processor, 1 GB of RAM, 80 GB S-ATA 5400 drive, RealTek R8187 WiFi, Sentilics touchpad.

The reason I mention the touchpad and WiFi is because they have been changed from time to time. For example the original plan was to include a Synaptics touchpad. Synaptics is one of the best touchpad manufacturers in the world and their products are great and easy to use. Let's just say Sentilics is not. For example, one of the things I've come to expect from a touchpad is the ability to scroll by ether using two fingers or one finger down the right side of the device. Unfortunately, Synaptics own that particular patent and the Sentilics pads only offer a tap/scroll function that is totally impossible to use.

I'll harp a bit more on battery life and build quality, but then we'll get to the good stuff ;)

The build quality is generally good, but the display assembly leaves a bit to be desired, with a fair bit of flex and even mild discoloration of the display when it is touching something. There's not much more to say about the build, except maybe the fact that I hate having to remove the whole bottom half of the case only to upgrade the RAM or hard disk. They could have taken a page out of Dell's book and copied the hatches from the Mini 9 which offer easy access to all the upgradable components.

Also the USB ports are placed to ether side which is good, it has 3 of them which is also good but they are placed towards the front of the device (to the side of palmrest area) which is not so good, especially when you have something you need to be connected at all times like a 3G or EDGE modem for example.

Moving on to battery life, with the 3-cell I get:
~2:30 on Windows XP SP3
~2:55 on Windows Vista Ultimate SP1
~3:10 on Windows 7 Beta (build 7000)
~2:45 on Ubuntu 8.10
~2:50 on Mac OS X 10.5.2

On a side note I've been through 300-350 cycles of the battery and these values haven't changed. And while it might not great but it does bring us to one of the good things about this little netbook, it can actually run all those operating systems. Not only that, but it has full support for wifi, audio*, card reader, webcam, etc in all of them.

* = OS X still has trouble with the audio jack

On to performance, the little guy is an absolute star. I've been able to get Ubuntu and XP running in VM on top of Windows 7. I've ripped DVD's, used multitrack editing software, software and web development environments, all without a hitch.

I did add a 1GB Corsair Value Select 667 SODIMM, and I upgraded the hard dist to 250 GB, but the processor was up to the task. In fact, just about the only thing I haven't been able to make it do is playback HD video with any sort of a decent frame rate (though it probably could be done if I shelled out for something like CorePlayer PRO).

Overall I couldn't be more pleased with this MSI Wind U100 netbook. And while I realize my needs are a bit special I think anyone who doesn't require HD playback and/or games would do well to give this laptop another look.