MSI may have announced the Wind U115 netbook with a combination hard drive and solid state disk back in January. But while we’ve seen the netbook unboxed, tested, and dissected some details have been hard to come by. Like the price and release date. Now Hexus is reporting that MSI will begin shipping the Wind U115 in the UK in May for a whopping £499. That’s the equivalent of $731 US, which seems like a lot of money for a netbook that isn’t really all that different from the Wind U120, which you can pick up for $330.
What the Wind U115 does provide is excellent battery life. The computer uses a low power 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z530 CPU. And thanks to its somewhat unique storage solution, the operating system and your core program files can hang out on the solid state disk and you can power down the hard drive when you’re not using it. MSI says the netbook should run for up to 12 hours on a charge with a single 6 cell battery. And while that’s pretty impressive, once you pass the 8 hour mark, I think a lot of people are happy. And you can already get 8 hours of battery life out of several netbooks that are selling for close to half the price of the U115, including the Asus Eee PC 1000HE which sells for under $400 and the upcoming Samsung N110 which will likely go for between $440 and $500.
But it’s always possible that MSI is suggesting a retail price of £499 and leaving it up to retailers to mark the computer down to a more reasonable price.
You can read more about the MSI Wind U115 in the Liliputing Product Database.