Technology has travelled a long way and the developments that we get today are outstanding. While the laptops once changed the entire paradigm of mobile connectivity, the netbooks today have actually revolutionized the array of portable connectivity. The days of wasting money on the worthless pieces of portable devices are gone and now you can get something that can give value to your money!

MSI Wind MS-U100x is one such example which can make you feel that you did not waste your money. Available in the Linux and XP models, it gives you the option to select your OS and play around while you stay connected on the go!

Out of the box

When out of the box, the MSI Wind MS-U100x gives you some goodies which includes a Li-ion battery, a bulky and secure wallet for the netbook and a power brick charger that matches the style of the netbook. It also has the warranty card and other paper works which most of us are least bothered about. The wallet swells a bit when you glide in the MSI Wind MS-U100x inside but the interesting feature is that it has a faux leather finish with extra padding and a zip which gives extra security to the netbook.

Battery

The Li-ion battery took me by surprise because of its large size. Unfortunately I found it to be low on performance as it provided 2½ hours of service and that too without the wireless connected to it. However, there is an option to upgrade the battery to a 6-cell Li-ion battery compared to the 3-cell battery provided. This will undoubtedly increase the cost of the netbook.

Hardware

The portability of the MSI Wind MS-U100x is associated with some good hardware that can at least handle the day to day rugged usage in the work environment. I was personally quite impressed by some of the specifications and hardware configuration of this ultra portable sub-notebook. These are listed below.

• Intel Atom 1.6 GHz processor with Hyperthreading.
• MSI Wind MS-U100x has a 10” wide screen and a 10.1” wide LED backlit screen with a resolution of 1024×600.
• The RAM is 1GB DDR2-667 memory which is quite impressive.
• Now, this is the feature that I like the most. It has an 80 GB SATA hard drive storage.
• 802.11 b/g wireless and Bluetooth
• It comes with a 1.3 mega pixel webcam which is really good enough to fiddle with for one time and then you are surely going to discard it forever!
• The MSI Wind MS-U100x has integrated stereo speakers! We will have a look at them later on.
• It has Windows XP Home (I would not comment on this because your preference of the operating system may be different from mine)!

Use and feel

The most remarkable of all the features of MSI Wind MS-U100x is that it does not have any tiny buttons to minutely search for! When I looked at the keyboard, it looked decent and with my fingers fiddling with the key, I was actually impressed with the size and the placing of the keyboard. The only thing or rather the element of a perfect keyboard that is missing is the smoothness but otherwise, it is a perfect keyboard for the MSI Wind MS-U100x. How can I forget the touchpad? That is something I know that you will be eyeing at. Well, it actually has a great feel and is slightly off centre. However, it is just the perfect size and has a touch-scroll support on the right.

Additional Hardware

This is an area where most of us look into before we actually rate a computer (netbook in this case)! The MSI Wind MS-U100x has three USB ports, one port for headphone and microphone. It also supports an SD card and an Ethernet slot. Additional it also has a VGA port.

As promised, let us get back to the sound section, the stereo speakers of the MSI are good but what else do you expect? A Dolby Surround? Well, that may be possible in Eee PC 901 with High-Definition Audio codec which is missing in the MSI Wind MS-U100x. It only features the ALC888S without any Dolby codec.

Also the netbook does not have any DVD/CD drives for playing a CD or DVD and you need to take some other help! The screen resolution is good enough, too.

Conclusion

Overall, the MSI Wind MS-U100x is a good netbook that can be relied on for connectivity on the go and with some good amount of storage capacity you can have some substantial amount of your important data at your disposal!

We also reviewed another model from the house of MSI - the MSI X320 - come on and see what it has to offer!

In 2008 Averatec released its Buddy N1030 which is a rebranded clone of the MSI Wind U100x. The Averatec Buddy comes with a stellar 10.2-inch LCD display with anti-reflective coating and an enormous 160GB SATA hard drive. Nevertheless, the netbook only weighs a little more than 3 pounds and is also able to run MSI Wind batteries.

The drawback of the Buddy is the very limited battery life of two to three hours. Apart from that, the portability and usability of the Averatec Buddy N1030 are good and the netbook is sold for a fair price. MSI has recently put some new and improved netbooks on the market and the Averatec Buddy’s advantages can now also be found in the MSI models.