Hey everyone,

I’ve been wanting to blog about this for a long time but have been so busy with the holidays and now getting ready for Vegas.  For Christmas I got an MSI Wind laptop, and it is like the best thing since sliced bread.  It is so small, fast, and overall intelligently designed.  The 10.2” screen may sound small, but most people get laptops and then never carry them around [or at least want to].  My Dell’s 17” may be nice and big when it’s stationary, but otherwise it’s a pain to move around.  Plus this screen is backlight with LEDs, so it’s really nice and bright, which pales in comparison to the old TFT I was dealing with.

Mine also came with the 6-cell extended battery and 802.11n WiFi card, which are both nice upgrades.  The 6-cell provides about 5.5 hours of work time, although you can get more or less depending upon brightness, power saving options, or if WiFi/Bluetooth is on.  It doesn’t have an optical drive, but I got a slim external USB powered DVD burner for only $60.  I rarely use an optical drive tho, since almost everything is digital or can be made digital.  I even got a high speed USB memory stick so I can install Windows/etc faster than CD/DVD.

The best thing of all?  The price: currently $370 with free shipping and no taxes [except in NY I think].  I got mine for almost $390 all-in, which was currently the lowest price before Christmas.  Most of the cheap models don’t have a bigger hard disk drive, faster wireless, Bluetooth, or the 6-cell extended battery.  This one in particular is made for the Canadian market, but the only difference is the keyboard, since it has a couple extra keys added for French users.  As a result, the enter key is bigger while others are smaller; some people like it, some people don’t.

I’m just glad to finally have a laptop that’s really portable, which is what a laptop is suppose to be.  Plus with most other laptops running at least $500 or $1000, this one offers a great package for a low price.

As a result, both me, my Mom, Peyton and James have one of these laptops [James got the 3-cell version tho, he wants a 6-cell battery].  Actually, James is responsible for all this Wind madness, since he told me about finding a netbook for school.

If you’re looking for a laptop, I definitely recommend checking out similar netbooks, although the differences can be big, so be sure to check reviews and specs.  One other laptop I was looking at quite closely was the Samsung NC-10.

@Matthew

PS—For all you Mac OS X lovers out there, it can run it too, with very little modifications now.  I’m running Vista and XP now, want to add SUSE, 7 and maybe OSX to the boot menu too.