MSI Wind Reviews
Wind stands for “Wi-Fi Network Device.” and it lives up to its name by offering 802.11 b/g WLAN, conecting you to the internet wirelessly. It is among the best selling netbooks on the market.
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Do you own this netbook? Leave a user review below and help other buyers!
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9 Positive Reviews |
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1 Negative Reviews |
Average Rating:
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I really enjoy the wind. The size and value punch is totally worth it. The only netbook with any decent size hard drive (I have the 120 GB u100).
Most people have a hard time with the wi-fi and webcam. Generally they haven’t installed the drivers or forgot to press the appropriate function key to enable it.
The pit fall is the track pad and mouse buttons. The track pad driver that comes out of the box does not allow you to disable tap to click and the mouse buttons are “See-sawed” so you can’t click them both at once and if you hit near the middle the button is a little hard to click.
However, a different driver can be installed to fix my dilemmas. The MSI Wind is well worth it. I put a lot of research into it comparing it to the eee pc and the AspireOne.
The best part about the MSI Wind is the wiki and forums located at http://www.msiwind.net.
The Wind is a great little netbook. It’s easy to upgrade. Extra memory, larger harddisk, other Wificard. Probably the best netbook if you want to install OSX.
Design is nice, I have a pink Wind. The one I bought was with a 3 cell battery which only gives you about 1,5 hour. Bought a 6 cell battery and very happy now with 4,5 hours. Keyboard is good, big enough. Trackpad is okay for me but I have the synaptic which seems better than the sentelic. Very snappy little machine. Really fast enough for internet, office, mails etc etc. Not a game machine but still lot’s of games that actually work very well on the Wind.
I watch movies on the wind most DIVX and works great. Sound isn’t that great, best to use headphones for music.
All in all a great netbook.
Buy the MSI wind only if you have a week to waste in making it’s features work. The U90X 8.9″ comes with the crappy Suse Enterprise and you won’t be pleased with it. The problems start there. You need to find an external DVD or CD ROM or make a bootable flash pen in order to install the OS you prefer. You’ll have a lot of hard time making the wireless connection work because of the lame card. Its quality is low and is supported by no more than 2 distributions of the different operating systems.
The design is good, though.
First of all, the MSI Wind is my first “netbook”. I haven’t owned any other one prior to this, and I feel this will probably skew my review in the positive direction, because I may blame flaws in the Wind on the fact that it is a netbook. However, a lot of the positive stuff is honestly also about it being an Atom-based netbook as well.
I’m not as familiar with other netbooks, but on the Wind, just saying you have a “Wind” doesn’t mean a whole lot since the hardware varies a bit. Mine is a 10″ U120 model purchased from NewEgg. Its got a 120GB standard harddrive, Realtek wireless G card, Senetic (spelling? Not the Synaptics) touchpad, and a measly 3-cell battery. I ordered a 1GB RAM stick upgrade, and got the laptop + RAM with next day shipping for $400 USD a few months ago (its December 24th 2008).
I’ve been very impressed with just how useful and useable this “net toy” has been. I don’t need a notebook. I have 2 computers at home, plus a work computer, plus various game consoles and things. I mainly got this as a little internet terminal I can take anywhere and not worry about because its so cheap.
Be aware, there are other versions of this laptop that cost a bit more but come with a 6-cell battery and/or BlueTooth. Mine didn’t. I have never said “OMG I need BlueTooth” for any specific task, but as a dork I feel the lack of functionality. The only thing that makes me regret my purchase as opposed to another Wind is the 3-Cell battery. This thing will barely make it 2 hours on battery power if you have most things turned off. If you plan on using it without AC at all seriously, get the 3-Cell. If you are like me and buy and like the 3-cell one you’ll probably buy a bigger 6-cell battery soon anyways (they aren’t on the market yet).
The body of this system is very simple, by necessity. To get access to the internals, the entire bottom of the chassis comes off. Its secured in place with about 10 standard Phillips screws. There’s a totally pointless warranty sticker over one of the screw holes. I say pointless because MSI will mail you a new one if you ask them for one, since you HAVE to open the unit to upgrade the RAM, which is allowed under your warranty.
For the hardware hacker people, be aware that there’s NOT a lot of space in this laptop. I’m not a super bad-ass soldering guy who can attach new stuff to the mobo, so I don’t really care, but don’t think you’re gonna go nuts and install a mini USB hub, GPS, etc etc. I plan on waiting until Broadcom’s new Wifi N + BlueTooth + FM cards are out and THEN upgrading using that. It would be possible to frankenstein a USB bluetooth dongle in, but it wouldn’t be pretty. I would say if you’re wanting hardcore hardware hacking, don’t buy this guy.
I DO plan on replacing the HDD and the wifi card eventually, and this is very easy since these are standard components. Overall, I love my Wind and everyone who sees it wants one
The keyboard is surprisingly useable, with nearly full-size keys in most places. The trackpad kindof sucks but only if you’re not used to trackpads. I’m OK with mine, and as others have mentioned, getting proper drivers and/or tweaking the settings will work wonders for your usage.
I gave it low marks for design not because its ugly or anything, its just that there’s nothing outstanding here. Also the “MSI” logo on the back is underneath the clearcoat finish, making it nearly impossible to remove without re-painting the whole laptop. So meh.
Would I buy another one? YES.
Would I consider buying some other brand? YES.
Am I satisfied with this one? YES
$400 was a steal as far as I’m concerned
Everything you need from a portable: good keyboard size, ability to run full scale Office 2007, reasonable screen size and resolution, reasonably fast internet, and absolutely an inexpensive computer: 299.00 at MicroCenter (in store). Doesn’t have a cd/dvd drive? No problem, I just hook my desktop external drive to the netbook. Makes my Toshiba laptop look and feel clunky. These netbooks are going to seriously affect the market for laptops. Reliability? Yet to be determined.
I really like the netbook.
I got the 3 cell/120GB model in black color. The aesthetics no the netbook is really good, the black glossy cover resembles the HP line of consumer notebooks and looks really good.
Feature wise I must mention it shares the same hardware with other netbooks, I mean, an Atom N270 and 1GB of DDR2, 802.11g, as well as 3USB ports, VGA out and mic and headphone jacks. A feature I really appreciate is the overclocking MSI offers using Fn+F10, specially when you consider the Intel Atom is by no means a performance champion. I’d like to have a 6 cell battery with the entry level model, but it is reserved for the 6 cell/160GB one. I give it a 4.5/5 in terms of features to the model I have.
In terms of value, it is really hard to beat this netbook, you can get it as low as US$ 350, and considering this model has a 10in screen, it is putting a lot of pressure to models with lower specs like the Inspiron Mini and the Acer Aspire One.
The usability of the Wind is amazing, specially due to its 10in screen, its keyboard and the ability to run Mac OS X!!! I love how well Leopard runs on the Wind, everything is silk-smooth and the system behaves really good. However, despite having a good keyboard and an excellent screen, the touchpad could be better. First, it’s small, second, it doesn’t match the screen ratio and third, having a single button is kind of annoying sometimes.
I’ve used a HP Mini 1000 and it has the best keyboard on a netbook, but getting the 10in screen increases the price a liitle bit. The Asus 1000H is excellent but is a little bulk and heavy for a netbook; and the Aspire One’s keyboard and screen hurts its usability.
Defining the best netbook is really hard, however, for US$ 350 it is really hard to get something better than the Wind and I give it an overall score of 4.7/5.0. Having a higher capacity battery and a better touchpad at the same price would make it the perfect netbook.
Nice little thing, robust and nice starting fast and are up and runing from start with Win XP.
the best netbook
The MSI Wind U210 is the ultimate netbook. For only $428 it has a 12.1″ display, 250GB hd, 2GB ram (upgradeable to 8), Radeon 1270 graphics, and Windows 7 Home premium. It also has a full size keyboard and HDMI out among other features.
For this price it can’t be beat!
I buy and sell laptops, so looking into netbooks was a natural transition. I decided on the MicroStar (MSI) rand from their stellar reviews.
I believe 10″ is the smallest screen size one can use without being limited and the 10.2″ works well. the smaller keyboard and see-saw laft+right button takes getting used to, but after a month i no longer thought about them. I use my netbook more than any other computer now.
On the down side;
They do not come with bluetooth enabled (there is an accomodation for it in the base unit but you have to add a BT card) i instead add a $20 usb dongle that sticks out about 1/8″ when plugged in.
the FN (function) button and the CTRL button are juxtaposed in the lower left of the keyboard, i am used to the CTRL being on the far left and the FN being to the right of it.
The Webcam needs to be turned on FN+F6 (or is it F5, i forget) before any program (like Yahoo messenger) will recognize it.
On the up side:
Great size/weight
Good standard specs (1.6Ghz atom processor, 1 gig ram)
The MSI netbooks have an overclocking feature in the BIOS meaning you can go up to almost 2GHzon the processor.
There is negligible heat produced even after hours of use
Expandable battery, I use an 8 cell battery that usually lasts me a little over 6 hours.
Very responsive customer service. i had one unit where the webcam was not responding, called the 800 number,, they checked the serial number (remove battery and that is the sticker you see) to determine if it was still under warranty, and emailed me an RMA. within a week it was returned to me with working webcam, and they even replaced my battery which they said wasn’t holding a full charge.