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The original MSI Wind U115 was an innovative netbook with a hybrid storage model that helped prolong battery life by using a combination of a low power solid state disk for the operating system and a hard drive for additional storage. If you weren’t accessing data on the hard drive, it could power down altogether. But MSI pretty much phased this model out after Microsoft told the company it wasn’t fond of the hybrid storage model for low cost Windows netbooks.
And then there’s the MSI Wind U110, a netbook which takes a different approach toward delivering ridiculously long battery life: It has a slow processor and an enormous 9 cell battery. The folks at Laptop Magazine reviewed the Wind U110 recently and discovered that it gets about 12.5 hour of battery life, which pretty much blows away the competition. By a lot.
But that battery performance comes at a price. The MSI Wind U110 is chunkier and heavier than other MSI netbooks thanks to the clunky battery. And the 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z530 processor doesn’t offer the kind of performance we’ve come to expect from the Atom N270 CPU found in most other netbooks. On the one hand, it uses less energy, which helps provide that stupendous battery run time. On the other hand, the Wind U110 scored below average in most of Laptop Magazine’s benchmarks.
You can find more details and photos at Laptop Magazine. The MSI Wind U110 is available from Amazon for $350
It really get my goat how Microsoft nd Intel can dictate the conditions of “free marklet” competition.
The EU should investigate anti-competitve practices.
I was thinking that very same thing