MSI Wind: Hands-on, with exclusive photos

We've just had an exclusive hands-on with the MSI Wind, which we liked the look of in March, and by golly it's good. So good, in fact, that it could take the throne from the Asus Eee PC as the best mini laptop on the planet.

It's ever so slightly larger than an Eee PC, and slightly heavier at 1.3kg, but don't let that put you off. It's still super-portable and once you see the confirmed specs -- and the extra tricks up its sleeve -- you'll be craving one, too.

We can't talk about the CPU yet -- it's top secret -- but we can tell you it's very quick and very power-efficient. What's more, the CPU can be overclocked by about 20 per cent using a dedicated button and MSI's TurboDrive Engine -- which we saw on the TurboBook GX600. The Wind will also sport 1GB of RAM, an 80GB mechanical hard drive, 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, three (count 'em) USB ports, a D-Sub video output, a 4-in-1 memory card reader, and a 3-cell battery with a claimed life of 3-4 hours.

The Wind will initially go on sale with a 10-inch, 1,024x600-pixel screen. This, it has to be said, is very, very good, since it doesn't use that awful reflective coating we saw on the HP 2133 Mini-Note. MSI also plans to ship a version of the Wind that uses an 8.9-inch display. They'll both use the same chassis, so expect the smaller version to have a large, unsightly bezel around the screen.

The Wind will ship in both Windows XP and SUSE Linux guises, with the XP version costing £329. Pricing on the Linux model isn't yet confirmed, but it'll be significantly cheaper, obviously.

We know you have more questions, and we have the answers. Click Next Photo for tonnes more info, and bask in the portable glory that is the MSI Wind. -Rory Reid

Update: Read our full MSI Wind review here, watch our hands-on video here and discuss it in our MSI Wind forum.

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