MSI Wind U100 Review

A little about the machine:
The MSI Wind U100 has a 10" (measured diagonally) widescreen 1026x600 pixel display that is very readable, a keyboard that is nearly standard-sized, and built-in WiFi (802.11b/g wireless), web-cam, microphone, and stereo speakers.

It uses an Intel Atom 1.6 GHz processor and has an SATA 120 GB hard drive and runs Windows XP Home. It reads SD, MMC, MS, and MS Pro cards, has 3 USB ports and a VGA video port. Not having a CD/DVD drive is a disadvantage, but with the USB and card ports and wireless or wired local networking, getting and sending files is easy. And it weighs only 2.3 pounds with the battery!

Why I chose a "netbook" for my teenager:
I wanted a computer she could easily carry with her and "netbooks" are down-sized laptops. Their screens are typically 8" - 10" on the diagonal, and the whole computer is usually less than 8.5" by 11", and weighs 2 - 4 pounds. She needed a computer for schoolwork and wanted one for fun, and this was a good, economical answer.

Reasons I liked it better than other netbooks:

* Larger-than-usual for netbooks display,
* Large keyboard with solid, springy feeling keys,
* Long battery life (some MSI Wind models even come with a 9-cell, 9 hour battery),
* Intel Atom 1.6 Ghz processor - not blazingly fast, but it has stood up to photo editing, web browsing, Video IM, Microsoft Word, and playing music all at once
* 2.5" (normal notebook-sized) 120GB SATA hard drive, which means it's got more storage space (than a flash hard drive) and reduces the MSI Wind's cost, and it's upgradeable.
* Comes with 1 GB of RAM memory, and is upgradable to 2 GB
* Runs Windows XP Home operating system, which makes it more compatible with school computers. I use both Windows and Linux, but she does not like my Linux computer.
* MSI (Micro Star International) makes desktop main boards that have excellent reviews and manufactures most of the parts for their computers.
* Excellent user community at msiwind.net

I don't have any photos of her MIS Wind 100 before it was covered with stickers, but there are photos of it (outside & inside) at the msiwind.net site. This particular model has been discontinued, anyway, and photos of available MSI Wind netbooks are on the manufacurer's website, www.msimobile.com.

The milk spill and cleanup saga:
My daughter spilled a glass of milk all over the keyboard. She did the first half of the rescue by immediately unplugging the AC power cord and removing the battery. She opened up the netbook and set it down with the hinges up (an upside-down V) so that the milk would not run into the computer any more than it had.

I did the second half of the rescue by cleaning up. I took the keyboard and the base cover off, cleaned off the one drip of milk I saw on the main board (the large computer card that takes up most of the space in a laptop), unplugged and washed (yep - at the kitchen sink, under running water) the keyboard. We gave it a couple days for everything to dry off, put it back together, and it's working fine again.