Ultimate Gadgetry: My Month With A Wind Netbook
Sunday, December 14, 2008 - John Greene
If you’re on the road a lot, going to tournaments, harassing family, etc, etc, lugging around a full-sized laptop can be more trouble than it’s worth, especially if you’re not going to be doing much more than getting online, checking email, and occasionally looking something up on the internet. Don’t get me wrong, I love my MacBook, but lugging it constantly gets a little old, especially if I plan on carrying anything else in my bag. That’s why I was excited when this whole Netbook revolution started and why I switched over to using a MSI Wind U100 last month.
This isn’t the computer you’d use to run a Powerpoint Presentation on, nor is it ideal for playing at UltimateBet (even if you can thanks to the WIndows XP upgrade option,) but if you’re looking for a nice halfway mark between your Blackberry or iPhone and your heavy-ass laptop, this is pretty close to perfect. Since I use GMail and Google Docs for most of my work, and the transition to using Linux when I first got it was easier than expected.
Size is the real key with the Wind and its competition like the Asus EEE; this sucker is tiny, just a bit smaller than the copy of Poker For Dummies my wife keeps sticking into my bag at 10.25″ x 7″ by .75″ . The smaller size means that you’ve got to make some adjustments. The keyboard took a little time to get used to, but since I use my Blackberry constantly, I’ve become adept at navigating smaller keyboards; I certainly have fewer typo-related problems with this than I did with the week I spent reviewing an iPhone for a Scottish tech magazine.
For the technically-minded, my model’s got a gig of RAM (with future models being able to hold more from what I can see) and a 120GB hard drive that is pretty empty because, as I said, I use Google Docs for most of my on-the-road writing, or I type directly into Wordpress like I’m doing now for this or my personal blogging. There’s a word processing application for Linux that writes to the Microsoft .doc format, so the little I may want to do without an internet connection can be taken care of quickly.
It’s a neat machine and I recommend looking at a Netbook if you don’t need to bring a “real” machine with you constantly, but would like to have something handy on the road. I’m also going to tell you to wait until January of February to pick one of the Winds up. They’re going to be making one that’s a bit more robust, without the memory limitations, designed for “professional” use, at about the same price point of just under $500.
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Tags: Ultimate Gadgetry
January 3rd, 2009 at 10:01 am
[...] Computer I’ve discussed my very pleasurable experience with the MSI Wind, but I’m going to have to give the netbook props to Samsung’s NC10, which arrived under [...]