MSI Wind U115 Hybrid now shipping in UK

The MSI Wind U115 Hybrid netbook has now started to ship in the UK. Whilst some of the bigger retailers have yet to list it, purelygadgets.co.uk has it in stock for the RRP of £499.99, whilst Laptops Direct has limited stock but is £50 cheaper at £449.99.

We have been eagerly awaiting the release of the Wind U115 Hybrid, mainly on the reports of its phenomenal battery life. We have seen tests that yield 13 hours on the 6-cell battery and up to 25 hours on the 9-cell battery.

It is expensive for a 10-inch netbook, however this premium is down to the Hybrid (HDD/SDD) storage solution and Intel’s latest Poulsbo chipset. The UK SKU will come with a 160GB hard-disk drive and 8GB solid-state drive. The HDD can be disabled which helps with the long battery times.

The 10-inch (1024 x 600) LED-backlit display is powered by a low-power 1.6GHz Z530 Atom CPU and US15W (Poulsbo) chipset. This chipset provides full hardware acceleration of HD files (including H.264, MPEG2 and VC1) helping to reduce the total power consumption. It will come with 1GB RAM and a 4-in-1 card reader. Other features include WiFi (including draft n), Bluetooth, a 1.3MP webcam and three USB ports.