While a ton of news has come out over the last few weeks about the MSI Wind laptop, now that Intel has officially introduced the new Atom CPU used by the device, all the non-disclosure agreements have been lifted, which means we’re starting to see complete reviews of the device that actually look at things like performance. Shocking, no?

Laptop Magazine reports that the Wind handles streaming video from sites like Hulu quite nicely. The HP Mini-Note, for comparison’s sake, can handle windowed YouTube videos, but try watching a streaming video in full screen and it’ll start stuttering. And forget about higher quality Hulu videos. The Wind also reportedly handles Skype video calls better than the Mini-Note.

More importantly, the system boots up in a relatively zippy 34 seconds and handles multitasking well.

Laptop Mag also clarifies exactly how that mysterious Turbo button works. While I had originally reported that it underclocks the computer rather than overclocking it, the truth is it does both. When you’re running on AC power, hitting Fn+F10 will boost your CPU speed by 20%, letting you run at 1.9GHz. When on battery power, the same button combo drops your clock speed to about 1.1GHz to let you save some battery life. Overall, with a 6 cell battery, Laptop reports that they got about 4 hours with the WiFi turned on, and 5.5 with the WiFi off.

Now for the bad news. MSI says that upgrading the RAM violates the warranty. Never mind the fact that MSI includes an empty slot for easily upgrading the RAM without removing your current stick. Of course, Asus made the same assertion when it first launched the Eee PC 701, but later retracted that policy.

Update: You can also find more photos than you can shake a stick at, plus benchmarks, at VR-Zone.

Support Liliputing

Liliputing's primary sources of revenue are advertising and affiliate links (if you click the "Shop" button at the top of the page and buy something on Amazon, for example, we'll get a small commission).

But there are several ways you can support the site directly even if you're using an ad blocker* and hate online shopping.

Contribute to our Patreon campaign

or...

Contribute via PayPal

* If you are using an ad blocker like uBlock Origin and seeing a pop-up message at the bottom of the screen, we have a guide that may help you disable it.

Subscribe to Liliputing via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 9,547 other subscribers

2 replies on “MSI Wind laptop gets (even more) official”

Comments are closed.