Going light with the MSI Wind U100XP

Ask Lilliput, being tiny has its advantages.

You fit in a pocket, you don’t have to dunk to hide, you can hop on a horse’s back and feel on top of the world. You get tossed in the wind, you can be ubiquitous yet quite unseen.

Thanks to the miniaturization of chips, gadgets are going the way of Lilliput, getting smaller every day. In Geekland, a generation of minis is being born. For one, the mini notebook is here, a category of its own in the PC market, officially called sub-notebooks or netbooks.

This month, another brand of these sub-notebooks was introduced in the market - the MSI Wind notebook PC.

Weighing only one kilogram, and literally as big as a standard high school notebook at 260 x 180 x 19-31.55 mm, it will always have room in a school backpack or an office bag. You can slide it into a brown envelope or a plastic folder like a book. Insert a bookmark if you like, for effect.

Perhaps it is called the “Wind” because it is almost weightless compared to the standard notebooks known for a long time to the computing public.

Its local distributor says the MSI Wind notebook U100XP has a larger screen size at 10", a full-sized keyboard and 80G hard disk drive compared to other netbook brands now available locally. It also comes with a wireless LAN802.11 BG, Bluetooth V2.0EDR and a webcam.

Powered by an Intel Atom processor with a memory of 1GB DDR2-667 that can support up to 2GB, it is powerful enough for Internet and multimedia usage. It also even has two channel stereo speakers and microphone and features HD audio.

Yes, they shrunk the laptop but tech executives are one in saying that sub-notebooks or netbooks like the MSI Wind are not meant to replace the standard full-sized notebooks. For one, they don’t have an optical media drive, have limited disk space and cannot accommodate as much software or multimedia files one would like to have. Yet they have a reason for being.

Going light: People are more mobile, prefer traveling light, and value portability like no other. This means trimming off excess fat and weight, not just in the body, but in what one carries every day.

Students, for one, who go to school almost every day, would find the MSI Wind easy enough to carry. Instead of bringing a heavy notebook, the MSI Wind is much easier to carry and accommodate in a cramped backpack. The same is true for mobile office workers who are on the road most of the time but who need to connect to the Internet and access their files.

Because it is quite small, you don’t even have to sit on a table to use it; it can sit on your lap while you are on the floor, while sitting on small chair or huddled with a group of friends in a hallway or a cramped coffee shop. And because it can connect to the Internet wherever there is a Wi-Fi signal makes it even more useful.

Keeping it simple: The Wind is also for the budget conscious. With the value of the peso spiraling down much faster than we can adjust to it, the basic thing to remember in buying a tech product nowadays is that you don’t have to pay for the features you don’t really need. If all you need in a computer is to write your homework or an article, store some photos, check on e-mails and connect to Messenger, the MSI Wind is a nice enough fit.

But of course, who wouldn’t go for a 250 GB of hard disk space, 16" wide screen, Quad core processor? But do you really need them? There is a big line that divides the power user from the simple user. If your needs are simple, keep your gadgets simple.

Saving up: According to Intel in a recent workshop for IT journalists, Atom-powered netbooks like the Wind consume only an average of 2.5 watts, which is similar in consumption to a bulb in a night lamp. Comparatively speaking, an electric fan consumes around 30 watts, a 32" LCD television, 200 watts, and one horsepower air-conditioning unit, around 760 watts. This adds up to the lower price point of netbooks.

These size and economic considerations, however, have some tradeoffs. For one, if you are a graphic designer or Web developer who needs many sophisticated software, the MSI Wind’s hard disk space may not be even enough for all of your software. If you are a researcher or a grad student writing a thesis or a book with voluminous documents to store and access all the time, the best you can do is get an external drive for additional storage space. If you are heavy on uploading files on the Web, it may not run as fast either.

Yet power users need not be turned off. From this user’s experience, the MSI Wind is a good complementary device for the full-sized, full-feature notebook that offers a full computing experience. You load onto the MSI Wind only files you need for the day or for the week and keep everything else in the mother computer at home or at the office.

The MSI Wind is best for bringing to a client meeting, an interview or for presentations, not only because it is portable, but because it also holds less files and does not have too many compartments; looking for stuff that you need right away is also easier, faster.

Ask Lilliput again, being tiny also has some disadvantages. The MSI Wind can get tossed here and there, bumped, trampled upon. You just have to remember that it may be notebook-like it is still a computer.

The MSI Wind sells for P24,999 and is available in white, pink and black.