MSI Wind Coming to a Major Retailer?

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Rumor had it last week that MSI was working on a deal with a major retailer to sell its Wind netbook. The rumor has been confirmed that the major retailer is Best Buy. Kyle just posted a video review of the MSI Wind U100-053US and he really liked it. Supposedly the retail version will run Windows XP and carry a $399 price tag.

MSI’s Director of U.S. Sales Andy Tung certainly thinks his company isn’t done shaking up the netbook pot. He has plans to keep the Wind flying ahead of the competition. In our hour-long interview, Tung shared that: The Wind U100 will be available at a national, and very large retailer in the coming week. The Wind with a 3-cell battery and Windows XP will be priced at $399.
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Best Buy is trying to be the trendy retailer I noticed. Every major tech trend that can fit inside its stores, it tries to make shelfspace for. In the meantime there's Fry's, which still has everything under the sun practically, and then Micro Center, which seems to have more options in PC cooling than I've ever seen in one B&M ever.
 
The Wind is lame anyway, the EEE PC and the Aspire One are hella better.
 
Steve said:
Stephen McBarnes gave me a heads up that the "major retailer" is indeed Best Buy
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Hurray that's me!

Glad I could be of service. I screwed up my Simpsons quote in the email I sent you.

It is:

That's some fine police work there Lou.

I wrote 'nice' instead of 'fine'.
 
I read the U100 battery didn t last 2 hours when tested by gizmodo / engadget / some random tech blog
 
None of these netboks last more than 2-3 hours depending on usage when equipped with the 3-cell batteries, that's why everyone favors the 6-cell variants... And the Aspire One at $399 with a 6-cell battery and a 160GB HD (w/WinXP) is still a much better deal than the Wind, screen's an inch smaller but it's still wider than the EEE PC 901 and other netbooks...

I think the keyboard is slightly smaller than the Wind's but larger and better arranged than just about any of the other netbook's, personally I think I like it more than the Wind's even. I like the dedicated Page Up/Down buttons (near the arrow keys) and the fact that the punctuation keys, used a lot to code, aren't skinny like the Wind's.

Touchpad's smaler and it has the buttons on the side though, that seems to bother some... I'd rather have that than the single rocking button the Wind and others have though. I heard MSI had been switching it's touchpad from a Synaptics pad to something else, dunno whether that's a big deal or not.

Wonder if Best Buy will bring the Wind down here though... Circuit City hasn't had the AAO down here, nor Walmart, and CompUSA has like an outdated EEE PC 4G and HP's slowpoke. :eek:
 
I just got my Wind yesterday from Newegg. Here is my super quick review. I haven't used any ultraportable/netbook before, so this is a virgin review addressing the things I was most worried about.


-Screen is bright and easy to see, good viewing angles.

-Keyboard is small but functional. There is only so much you can do with a 10" keyboard, and I'd say they did as well as they could

-Out of the box not a lot of crapware loaded into Windows XP, which makes it run nice and snappy right at boot up.

-Super light weight. Of course, that's the point, but it's still a little bit amazing to me.

-I understand the 3-cell battery can be an issue for some people, but I'm just not ever using a laptop for 2 hours without a plug nearby. That said I did see the battery getting pretty low after only a couple of hours.

-3 USB ports, SD slot, speakers, VGA Out, Bluetooth, and WiFi. What more do you need?

-Not gonna play Crysis or Oblivion on it, but Peggle ran good :)

-Mainly this was for my wife, who doesn't do much besides read emails, surf lolcats, and occasionally remote desktop into her office. She LOVES it. She hated her old 6 lb Toshiba and she loves the fact that this thing is so light weight.

-One negative, it's got like, 1.5lbs of power cords and adapters. If everything else was so small and lightweight why couldn't they do something different there?

All-in-all it seems a good laptop to me. Like I said, I have nothing to compare it to (other than my 12.1" Dell D430, which is obviously a different beast) but for a first go at it I'm very impressed.
 
I'll probably pick one up for my wife too. She always complains about having to lug her 6 bound work IBM from work to home and back everyday.
 
WHEN will we finally get the version that we all want? 10" 6cell 1g and the same HDD as the largest one

The problem is in the battery price for the CONSUMER
6cell= $145
9cell=$180!!! (a month out)
 
Cool MSI in retail stores, the Winds of change are blowing

/Major
 
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