MSI Wind U100 Valentine Edition: geek romance, exemplified

Oh sure, there’s all manners of garb and chocolates that you could get your lover this Valentine’s Day, but the true geek knows just how hard it is to pick up those all-too-clichéd items when it’s a gadget you’re really after. Enter MSI, who has just delivered the appropriately named Valentine Edition of its Wind U100 netbook just in time for that special holiday. If you’ll recall, this isn’t the first time MSI has outed a minuscule laptop oozing with romance, but this one boasts a limited edition label (figuratively, at least), a 6-cell battery, 160GB hard drive and a 1.6GHz Atom N270 processor. You can purchase 2.6 pounds of lovey-dovey right now for $429.99, but you better act fast — no lady worth having will accept the “my UPS guy didn’t come through” excuse. The full release is after the break.

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MSI Wind U100 Valentine Edition: geek romance, exemplified originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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MSI announces Wind NetTop D130 — the desktop with Nordic styling

MSI announces Wind NetTop D130 -- the desktop with Nordic styling

Every morning we struggle to stay awake while reading one copycat netbook announcement after another, and, now that low-end desktops seem to be finding the same popularity, we’ve ordered a fleet of coffee robots to keep eyes open at Engadget HQ. On the heels of unveiling its mildly interesting all-in-one Neton series, MSI has followed up with the rather more generic D130 NetTop, featuring something MSI calls “Nordic Simple Style” (which they previously just called barebones). Moving beyond appearances, the machine does seem like a decent package, sporting a mild but serviceable Atom 330 processor, 2GB of DDR2 memory, a Super-Multi DVD burner, 7.1 output, and a meager 35W power consumption when operating at “full speed.” Granted, that full speed won’t do much for your 3DMark scores, but an expected $240 price tag should make it a good fit for anyone in search of a simple machine for desk or home theater.

[Via I4U News, image courtesy of TweakTown]

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MSI announces Wind NetTop D130 — the desktop with Nordic styling originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Jan 2009 09:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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MSI plans to offer X-Slim laptops with Pentium processors

Well, it looks like MSI isn’t about to wait around for Intel to deliver those new high-end, lower-cost processors for ultrathin laptops, as the company has just announced that it’s planning to offer “high-powered” Pentium processors in its line of X-Slim laptops. That will apparently push the Pentium-equipped models past the $1,000 mark (as opposed to the $800 the Atom-based models will demand), although MSI apparently isn’t ready to get more specific than that. The company also doesn’t seem to have had much to say about any other potential spec-changes, with it only divulging that the Pentium-based models would will loaded with Vista.

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MSI plans to offer X-Slim laptops with Pentium processors originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 12 Jan 2009 18:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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MSI Wind U120 hands-on

MSI’s Wind U100 had a good run, but now it’s time for the U120 to take over. We caught wind of this one just a few days back, but once the show floor opened we were finally able to feast our eyes on one. We’ve gotta say — it looks mighty good, so feel free to have a look in the gallery below to see if you agree.

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MSI Wind U120 hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 08 Jan 2009 19:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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MSI X-Slim 320 vs MacBook Air… fight!

You knew the comparisons were inevitable, but have you braced yourself for how incredibly similar these two laptops are? MSI’s new X-Slim 320 13.3-inch ultraportable is a teensy bit wider and a teensy bit thicker than the MacBook Air, but most of the dimensions, layouts and curves are uncannily alike. As for build quality, MSI obviously suffers a bit for its netbook heritage. The plastics aren’t stellar, and the keyboard, while delightfully full size, is a tad squishy, but there’s still no denying that this is a pretty wild deal for this very particular form factor — plus that built-in 3G, VGA and Ethernet are just rubbing it in Apple’s face.

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MSI X-Slim 320 vs MacBook Air… fight! originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 08 Jan 2009 13:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Creative unveils Zii

Creative unveils Zii

If, despite our warning, you were still hoping that the Zii was some sort of new form factor media player or maybe even a futuristic computer that could morph and change shape as needed, prepare to be a bit disappointed. Creative has revealed all, and while everything we know has indeed not changed (contrary to earlier promises) we can now confidently tell you that Zii is a system-on-a-chip architecture for high-demand media applications, featuring numerous discrete processing elements that, to our untrained ears, sounds at its core a bit like Sony and IBM’s Cell. It’s said to offer performance to rival a supercomputer, easy scalability to provide limitless growth (from gigaflops to petaflops), and some sort of integrated throttling to enable higher efficiency by shutting down disused aspects of the system. The first piece of hardware from this platform is called the ZMS-05 Media-Rich System-On-Chip, and companies like MSI and PowerLinux have pledged their support, the latter of the two planning to use the processor for its embedded Linux video conferencing systems. We’re definitely eager to see what sort of innovative uses come out of this new architecture, but for some reason we don’t quite feel like the hype was warranted.

Update: Philip wrote in to let us know that the ZMS-05 is effectively just an updated and expanded version of 3DLABS’s older DMS-02 chip, which, while also impressive, didn’t change everything we know either.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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Creative unveils Zii originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 08 Jan 2009 10:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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MSI’s upgraded Wind U100 gets tested and overclocked

While the original Wind U100 has stooped below $350 in many shops, the upgraded version — complete with a 160GB hard drive and a much needed 6-cell battery — is currently going for around $420. The PC abusers over at HotHardware managed to get this slab onto their testing bench, and test they did. After applying the recently released v1.09 BIOS, which enables press-of-a-button overclocking, they found that it worked remarkably well. In fact, they noted that this feature alone placed the Wind a step above its rivals for those who appreciate even minor increases in speed. They even went so far as to benchmark the OC’d machine against a standard U100 and a few other competitors, but we won’t ruin the surprise by blurting out the results here. Have a gander at the read link for more, but don’t blame us if you come away with an unexpected urge to buy a netbook.

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MSI’s upgraded Wind U100 gets tested and overclocked originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 06 Jan 2009 04:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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MSI at CES: Wind U115 / U120, NetOn all-in-one PC, gaming laptops galore

If you thought that MSI would allow CES to pass it by without unleashing a veritable smorgasbord of new kit upon us, you’re dead wrong. For starters, the company will be showcasing its Wind U115 and U120 netbooks for the first time in the public eye at CES, and those oh-so-intriguing NetOn all-in-one machines we spotted overseas will also be making their US debut. Said rigs will arrive in 16-, 19- and 22-inch flavors, and it’s expected that Intel’s dual-core Atom will be powering the trio. Carrying on, we’ve got the EX625 and EX623 entertainment lappies joining the EX family with inbuilt subwoofers and Blu-ray drives, and the GT725, GT727, GT627 and GX420 will all be sliding into the gamer-centric GX line. Finally, MSI will be demonstrating its first “eco-friendly carbon fiber concept gaming notebook,” so we’ll definitely be sashaying over to wrap our paws around that. Head past the break for the full release.

Continue reading MSI at CES: Wind U115 / U120, NetOn all-in-one PC, gaming laptops galore

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MSI at CES: Wind U115 / U120, NetOn all-in-one PC, gaming laptops galore originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 05 Jan 2009 17:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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MSI unveils ultra-thin X-Slim 320, fits snugly into manila envelope

MSI has unveiled the 13.4-inch X-Slim 320 (is that you, U300?), which at 1.98cm and about 2.87 pounds puts it just a teensy bit lighter and thicker than its Cupertino-born doppelganger, and comes with either a 4 or 8 cell battery that lasts up to 10 hours. The company provides no specs in its presser, but our cohorts at Engadget Chinese were at an MSI pre-CES event and report that we’re looking at a 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z530 processor, 1366 x 768 resolution, up to 2GB DDR2 RAM, 802.11a/b/g/n, Bluetooth, 3.5G network card, three USB ports, an Ethernet port, VGA output, and an all-in-one card reader, and according to Crave it might be using the NVIDIA Ion platform. It’s coming second quarter of 2009 for about $800 — we’ll see it for ourselves later this week.

[Via Engadget Chinese]

Read – MSI press release
Read – Crave report

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MSI unveils ultra-thin X-Slim 320, fits snugly into manila envelope originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 05 Jan 2009 13:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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MSI Debuts Hybrid Netbook

MSI%20U115%20Hybrid.JPGMSI announced its U115 “hybrid” netbook on Tuesday. What’s a hybrid netbook? One with the ability to use both a solid-state disc drive as well as a spinning hard drive, apparently.

MSI didn’t release a price or a ship date for the U115 netbook, which includes a 10-inch display and is designed around Intel’s 1.6-GHz Z530 Atom processor and its “Menlow” chipset platform. Other specs include the usual 1 Gbyte of RAM, 802.11b/g/n wireless, Bluetooth EDR, a few USB ports, either a 1.3-Mpixel or 2.0-Mpixel Webcam, and 4-in-1 card reader. MSI didn’t draw any overt comparisons to the MSI Wind, the company’s more famous netbook offering.

The real innovation, at least according to MSI, is the 8- or optional 16-Gbyte SSD working in conjunction with the 120-Gbyte or optional 160-Gbyte rotating hard drive.