Just like Asus and Gigabyte, MSI has also decided to jump on the netbook bandwagon and launched what was believed to be, at the time of its release, the most important competitor both for the EEEPC from Asus and, to some extent, for the Macbook Air. However, regardless of which of the two it targeted, the fact remains that MSI's Wind is one ultra-portable computing machine that perfectly fits the characteristics of the netbook family.

The Wind U100 versions, which you'll be able to read about as follows, offers users a fairly large amount of computing power, packed into a slim and lightweight body (260 x 180 x 19-31.5 mm), at a weight of around 1 kilo. And that's because it integrates one of Intel's biggest successes, the Atom processor (N270, 1.6GHz), combined with an Intel chipset (945GSE+ICH7M).

MSI allows users to equip their Wind U100 with either 512 MB or 1 GB of DDR2 667 RAM memory, while the storage is provided by the 80GB SATA HDD. The size (10 inches) and the resolution (1024x600) of the TFT LCD display are also standard, and the same can be said about the audio system, which includes an HD audio chipset and stereo speakers.

Just as in the case of most netbooks out there, the Wind comes equipped with a wide variety of connectivity options, either wired (VGA, USB 2.0, Audio Line-In, Headphone output, Ethernet connector) or wireless (Built-in 802.11b/g WLAN Card, with an optional Bluetooth module). Moreover, the device also incorporates a 4-in-1 card reader, compatible with the SD/MMC/MS/MSpro memory card formats.

The MSI Wind U100 sells for around 575 US dollars, which is a bit more expensive than the majority of netbooks out there, but the difference in screen diagonal size, as well as the other features provided by this portable device make it be worth every penny.