The MSI Wind U115 is available for order from a handful of stores in France, including Topachat, where you can pick it up for 549.90 € and Rue du Commerce, where it’s selling for 554 €. Material.net is asking 559 €.
The MSI Wind U115 is one of the newest netbooks from MSI. Like the company’s earlier netbooks it sports a 10 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel display and Intel Atom processor. But there are a few things that set it apart. First, it uses the Intel Atom Z530 CPU which consumes less power than the Atom N270 CPU found in most netbooks. Second, it uses a hybrid storage system consisting of a hard drive and solid state disk. The operating system and some programs can be installed on the SSD, allowing the computer to shut down the hard drive when it’s not in use, thus saving even more power.
The result? Ridiculously long battery life. With a standard 6 cell battery, the Wind U115 can run for as long as 13 hours on a charge. Slap a higher capacity 9 cell battery in there, and you’ve potentially got as much as 25 hours of run time.Â
No word on a US release date yet.
At half the price, I might be tempted. Let’s hope those are just silly import mark-ups rather than anything remotely resembling retail prices.
If SSDs are so much more energy efficient, why the move to hard disks in the first place? I’d far rather an SSD even of 4GB than any size of moving platters waiting to crash at the first opportunity.