UMPC Choice: ASUS Eee PC vs. MSI Wind notebook
April 29, 2008 By Peter
Filed under Computers, Ultra Mobile PC
The UMPC seems to becoming a more popular choice for people who are on the move as they are much easier to transport around with you while traveling. There are a few Ultra Mobile PC’s on the market however; there is only one that has had all the attention, and that is the ASUS Eee PC. Asus has not really had much competition in this area, but this could be about to change with the release of the MSI Wind notebook.
So what has the Asus Eee PC got to offer? Well firstly Asus have two models of their popular UMPC Eee 700 series and the Eee 900 Series. The 700 series was the first out and did prove popular however; at only 7-inches It seemed to be a little on the small side. The standard Eee PC 700 only had a 2GB solid-state drive and just 256 MB, but a later model see this increased to 512 MB of RAM.
Asus learned a lot from their first attempt which was great news for when they released the larger Eee 900 Series, as you would expect the new model had a more popular larger screen and a full size keyboard with a multi-touch trackpad. This new machine now had the choice of either Linux or Windows XP OS.
The new Asus Eee 900 comes with a 20 GB SSD on the Linux version and a 12 GB solid-state drive on the Windows XP version, It seems strange that the more resource hungry windows gets a smaller hard drive. The new Eee 900 has had a few problems from the start, like a battery that does not last as long as it should do. Do not despair though as Asus are now rectifying this with a more powerful battery.
So will the new MSI Wind notebook be able to compete with the Asus Eee PC, and the first to try and take the fight to the Eee PC is the U100. As with the Eee PC the U100 comes with the choice of either Windows XP or Linux OS. The processor used to keep things running will be the Intel Atom 1.6GHz and 2GB of DDR2 RAM. One area that the U100 will lose out on is the standard 80GB 2.5” SATA hard drive; this will use a lot more power than a SSD. The screen is a 10-inch so a little larger than the biggest Eee PC, so getting towards a normal size laptop.
The MSI U100 Wind notebook will come with a choice of either a 3 cell or 6 cell batteries, not sure what the difference between the two is not known.
The future of computers is changing fast so many people seem to be dumping their bulky desktops for laptops, but then again laptops sales have been affected with the increased in sales of the much more portable and lighter UMPC’s. And sales will increase even further once larger SSD’s are developed and processors get more efficient.
Thanks to TweekTown for MSI Wind Notebook Images
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i’m looking forward to the day when UMPCs is able to last at least 1 working day before recharging. It’ll then be truly worth buying one for the road warriors.
This is probably one of the worst articles about the Eee PC I have ever encountered. Leaving alone the spelling and grammatical mistakes, of which there are many, many points are uninsightful or just plain wrong.
1. The Eee PC 700 was available in 2G, 4G, and 8G solid-state hard drives, not just 2G.
2. The reason why the Linux version of the Eee PC 900 has a larger hard drive is to keep the price of the Linux and Windows versions equal without giving away the price of the licensing fee for XP (something Microsoft objected to). So instead of charging more for XP, they charge the same but give you a smaller drive.
2a. Not that XP is particularly more “resource hungry” when it comes to hard drive space–sure, the OS itself takes up space, but only about a gig if system restore is not enabled. The “resources” you’d be looking for with XP are RAM or processor power, and those do not change between models.
3. The difference between a 3 cell battery and a 6 cell battery is “not known”? Umm, perhaps a 3 cell battery has twice as many cells and thus can last longer, genius? Usually they are also heavier, which is a trade off with an UMPC.
4. As to your last brilliant conclusion, the Eee PC is not designed or marketed as a desktop replacement, but rather a second PC for mobile computing. The other conclusions are nonsensical and thus I will not respond to them.
Please stop writing articles and go back to the high school composition class from whence you crawled.