MSI officially launches U110 ECO – 9hr battery life promised
March 16, 2009 at 12:20 pm
MSI has today officially launched its Wind U110 ECO netbook. Its claim to fame is a battery life of nine hours. However, the press release doesn’t make it entirely clear whether this is with the supplied 3-cell battery or optional 6-cell battery. We’d go with the latter which would not be entirely unexpected given the choice of Atom CPU (featuring Menlow platform) and LED-backlit display, saving power over an LCD equivalent.
The unit is powered by a 1.6GHz Z530 Atom CPU and Intel Poulsbo US15W chipset. What I find confusing is that the press release also points to an ATi Radeon HD3200 for graphics duty which was certainly unexpected. However given that Intel’s chipset features integrated GMA500 graphics and only two PCI Express x1 lanes, it’s a bit hard to see how this could be possible. We await to see whether this is a mistake on MSI’s part or it is indeed true. Read more
MSI Wind U115 Hybrid runs for over 13 hours on single charge
March 12, 2009 at 12:10 pm
The MSI Wind U115 netbook was announced at CES in January with a promised battery life of 10.5 hours on a 9-cell 5200mAh battery. This long battery life was touted as a result of a combination of a 160GB hard drive and a 8GB SSD. The U115 is powered by a 1.6 GHz Intel Atom Z530 CPU. However, according to some battery tests by EeePC.de, it seems that those MSI battery claims may actually be conservative.
The test was run in Battery Eater Classic, which continuously calculates the decimals of Pi until the CPU is at 100-percent, as well as running 3D graphics tests. As for netbook settings, the U115 was switched to 30-percent brightness, using SSD only (rather than the HDD) and WiFi turned off. This yielded a battery life of 13 hours and 15 minutes. More tests are planned, this time testing how long it would last with WLAN turned on, which would provide more real-world results. However, given the impressive 13-hour run time, we would expect at least ten hours with WiFi switched on.
Now, from reading the article, it is still unclear whether a 9-cell or 6-cell battery was used in the test. I imagine it is indeed the 9-cell battery, although it is worth remembering that this is unlikely to be sold as standard with the Wind U115 Hybrid. However, if these results are representative of final units then even a 6-cell battery is likely to yield a battery life of over 7 hours in the real world.
Asus squeezing out netbook channel partners?
March 9, 2009 at 8:00 pm
Reports are surfacing that Asus’ is trying to avoid competition from its partners in the netbook space by squeezing them out. The manufacturer is being accused of holding onto its netbook printed circuit boards (PCBs) rather than shipping it through to system integrators. “Sorry, these boards will not be available to our customers. You can buy the machines from us already built, but the mainboards will not be for sale“. This was Asus’ reply when a major UK system integrator enquired about buying its next-generation mainboards. A close source to The Inq said that Asus is trying to “choke the life out of the channel in order to survive the economic storm more or less in tact.” MSI and Gigabyte are apparently waiting on the wings to pick up the pieces.
MSI Winki, instant OS coming to Wind netbooks soon
March 5, 2009 at 3:45 pm
MSI has announced it’s own instant-on operating system called Winki, based on the Linux kernel. Whilst MSI has only talked about Winki in terms of desktop computers, we would be very surprised if Winki did not appear in some of its upcoming Wind netbooks. Both Acer and Asus are expected to feature the HyperSpace instant-on OS in upcoming netbooks and MSI doesn’t want to be left behind.
Typically, these instant-on OSes take a few seconds to boot, but the start up time is still up to 40% shorter than that using a Windows XP-based machine. However, MSI feels it is onto a winner, “Winki’s greatest ability is how it compares to other OS supported devices: it starts up faster, uses less electricity, will not have problems caused by virus and, best of all, and does not cost customers a penny more”, said MSI in a staement. Winki will come with Firefox, Skype and a multi-IM application called Pidgin pre-installed. It also supports 15 different languages. The Winki is likely to debut in a netbook that will be focused largely on web browsing, photo sharing and VoIP calls. No release date has yet been announced. The full press release is available after the jump.
MSI Wind U100 ‘Plus’ spotted
March 3, 2009 at 12:05 pm
A refresh of the popular MSI Wind U100 has been spotted by the guys over at Notebook Italia. The main upgrade seems to be CPU/chipset based with the rest of the specs remaining the same. The ‘Plus’ version will include an Atom N280 processor (instead of the N270 on the original version) along with the Intel 945GSE + ICH7M chipsets. Other specs, which remain the same, include a 10″ (1024 x 600) screen, 160GB HDD, 2GB RAM, 1.3MP Webcam and 3 Cell battery. Pricing is expected to be similar to the existing U100 range and will launch in a few months.
Via Notebook Italia.
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