MSI Wind U115 Hybrid

From the outside, the Wind U115 looks like your average 10in Small, Cheap Computer - which makes the fact that MSI has managed to squeeze in not one but two storage systems all the more impressive. MSI Wind U115 MSI's Wind U115: old styling, new approach to storage With most netbooks, you face the choice between either a …

[Anonymous Coward]

It;s going to fail.

You can't name something after the wind and not expect it to blow.

[Anonymous Coward]

Small Cheap Computer?

At what point will el Reg start calling these things Small Expensive Computers? This is now more than twice the price of the original 701.

[J]

all day on a single charge!

If they dumped the HDD, used the 16GB SSD as standard and ran it on Linux. I'd buy one in a heartbeat. 8 Hours battery life! Finally, I can go out in the morning and know I will be able to use the thing all day without needing the power block, which is the entire point of a mobile computer in my opinion.

[Anonymous Coward]

But what's it for?

Seriously? The mechanical disk's still fragile even if switched off, and who uses a netbook in a non-mobile situation anyway? Maybe if you paid that much for it, you couldn't afford to own a proper computer too.

Having said that, I'm still very happy with my 701 which I upgraded by fitting a pair of 16gig pendrives internally, software RAIDed don't you know :-) Proper SSD for the OS, cheap pendrives for bulk storage, /var, swap, etc. Lovely and fast too. Oh, and I got a 9 cell battery. Never actually had it run out of juice yet.

[Scott Mckenzie]

Fn Key

Should be bottom left... it really irritates me when they move the CTRL key to bottom left...

I guess it all depends on what you're used to, but having a Mac as my main computer it bloody irritates me moving to other systems... and the " (speech marks) key shouldn't be above the number 2 either as that's just a bit gay.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Scott Mckenzie

OMG you're right it has got a strange £ over the 3 too. It is almost as if the UK computer on the UK website with price quoted in GB pounds has a UK keyboard fitted. What numpties.... hash next to the enter key to cap it off... blimey.

[Ian Johnston]

Small ... what? ... computer

Four flippin' hundred and flippin' fifty flippin' quid? That's what I was quoted for a brand new Thinkpad X31 on Tottenham Court Road a week or two ago. Or two perfectly good laptops from Morgan.

The point of the Eee 701 - and I love mine - was that you put up with the low spec for the sake of the low price. How we seem to be expected to pay extra for the low spec.

[Jim]

As has been said...

£450 ain't cheap. Really anything above £300 is not really an SCC. I was really interested right up until the price...

@Scott Mckenzie

Hmm, just checked my Mac keyboard and no Fn key in the bottom left - Ctrl just like every other (non-laptop, 'English') keyboard.

And as for the position of " & @, are you suggesting that the rest of the world should bow down to the US as the superior race? Oh, wait...

Saying that I prefer the US layout, being a righty and prefering a proper sized left shift key. Rather than the crappy little one on UK keyboards, just so they can move \ to make a weird shaped Return/Enter that looks like it belongs on a cash register...

[TeeCee]

"The idea is...."

Actually, I reckon that the idea is *really* to be "Readyboost", er, ready for the Win 7 netbook edition launch.

ISTR that Win 7 will use yer actual small SSD as a Readyboost device rather than refusing to countenance anything other than a USB connected device for such, as with its more brain-dead predecessor.

With this setup, they'll have something that can get Win 7 up and running in a sensible time on the otherwise sclerotic hardware.