I’ve been patiently awaiting a competitor to the ASUS Eee netbook. Why? So I can be writing stuff like this without actually sitting at my desk. It’s not meant to replace my desktop — merely accompany it. I’ve looked at the MSI Wind, the Acer Aspire One and the ASUS Eee line, but I just couldn’t commit to any of them. Then Dell shows up with their Inspiron Mini 9.
I remember VIA as the “other” chipset vendor. You know, the cheaper alternative with picky PCI clockrate issues. That was a long time ago. Nowadays, they’re in the business of low cost and low power chipsets and processors. Starting Thursday VIA will be partnering up with NVIDIA in order to take on Intel and its Atom platform . All the best to the soon-to-be newly weds!
Speaking of Atom, the MSI Wind finally launched. It comes in two configurations:
$399 - Linux and 512 MB DDR2
$499 - Windows XP Home 1 GB DDR2 (2 GB maximum)
Both come with the usual array of features which you can discover for yourself on MSI’s website.
I’ve been keeping my eye out for a laptop like this - especially ones configured with Intel Atom processors. Between this and the ASUS Eee PC 1000, I’ve got plenty to think about. Which is the better one? I don’t know yet.
