[doody]

There's not much battery life left - hopefully it makes it through Warcraft III. Copied the install files over on a thumbdrive, since I don't have an external CD-ROM drive. Meanwhile, did some searching for the wireless card that's supposed to be in the MSI Wind. For some reason it's not showing in the Device Manager, although it's working fine.

It's 11:00PM, 24% and 38mins left. Warcraft III is installed and it's time to try it out. By the way, I'm running WC3: ROC only. TFT wasn't installed cos it's a waste of time with regards to this testing.

Oops, forgot the "fix" . Settled the problem and got down to business. The main screen loads up fine, thanks to the bigger 10" screen. Turned all the Video settings down to Low/Off, with the exception of Unit Shadows. Resolution is at 800x600x16.

Started a new Human campaign just for the fun of it. While changing to the loading screen I saw the desktop flicker for a moment - the same thing was spotted when I skipped the opening Blizzard movie.

The first stage of the Human campaign went pretty well. Apart from the fact that it's hard to play with a trackpad, gameplay was pretty smooth. Finished the first mission before quitting and uninstalling it. It might not be as smooth if you're playing a custom map like DotA.

Copied over the screenshots to my desktop and cleaned up any other extra files that I left behind on the MSI Wind. At 11:20PM Windows was complaining about low battery power, with 6% remaining and only 8 mins left. I spent the last few minutes at Youtube watching a video on the HP Mininote. Video playback was smooth with no jerks or lags. Barely 2 minutes into the start of the HP 2133 introduction, the MSI Wind went to standby.

End time: 11:24 PM

[doody]

Summary:

MSI Wind with 3-cell battery.
50% brightness, Wifi switched on and connected to an AP, Bluetooth switched off, Speakers on maximum volume, Webcam switched off.

Start Time: 9.05PM
End Time: 11.24PM
Total Battery Life: 2 hours 19 minutes

List of things done during the battery test:
- Windows Update
- HD Tune benchmark
- Bootvis benchmark
- PCMark05 benchmark (did not get result at the end)
- 3DMark03 benchmark
- Played Warcraft III for 15 minutes
- Viewed Youtube for 5 minutes

Given the fact that most of the things on the list put the CPU/HDD at high load, you might get better battery life during "normal" usage. I would estimate battery life at 2 hours 30 minutes to 2 hours 45 minutes for normal usage.

[eeeQuotient]

ok after all that, so whats next up

[behling]

doody. hows the kb size?

[doody]

Originally Posted by eeeQuotient

ok after all that, so whats next up

Waiting for updates from Corbell, of course...

[doody]

Originally Posted by behling

doody. hows the kb size?

The keyboard size is good. Significantly bigger than the Eee PC's keyboard, and much easier to type on.

[doody]

Let's talk about SSD vs HDD.

I know everyone here knows what an Eee PC is - who doesn't? You also know that it is the first UMPC to use a SSD as primary storage. Now we're looking at the best competitor to the Eee PC: the MSI Wind. Sure, there are other products like the Kohjinsha, Cloudbook (and all its variants), and the HP Mininote. However, these products are actually placed out of the Eee PC's "category" due to pricing (too expensive) and availablilty (not available). The MSI Wind is different. Physical dimensions and specifications may not be similar, but we're looking at a similar price range, especially for the 8.9" Eee PC 900 - $798 for the Eee PC vs $829 for the MSI Wind.

That said, let's look at the performance of the Eee PC's SSD vs the MSI Wind's HDD, using HD Tune benchmarks as a guide.

[doody]

First, let's look at the HD Tune benchmarks for the Eee PC - courtesy of 1 GHz over at VR-Zone.


This is the benchmark for the 4GB onboard SSD on the Eee PC 900.


This is the benchmark for the 16GB mini-PCIe SSD on the Eee PC 900.

We can now see some characteristics of SSD:

1. Sustained transfer speeds
2. Negligible access times

Sustained transfer speeds: SSDs are Solid State Drives, hence they have no moving parts. Unlike a conventional HDD, there is no platter spinning and no drive head to read data off the platter. Hence, there is actually very little need to defragment a SSD. Data can be read with the same speed regardless of where it is placed on the SSD. Hence, SSDs are able to maintain a high transfer rate without much fluctuations.

Negligible access times: Due to the fact that SSDs have no moving parts, access times are greatly reduced. Also, we are able to obtain a consistant access time, in this case, 0.5ms.

[doody]

Now, let's look at the benchmark for the MSI Wind's conventional 2.5" HDD.


This is the benchmark for the 80GB 2.5" HDD on the MSI Wind.

If you still recall the earlier pictures on the SSD, you will notice some glaring differences:

1. Higher transfer rate
2. Greater access time
3. Higher burst rate

Higher transfer rate: We actually have higher transfer rates for the conventional HDD as compared to the SSD. While SSDs are supposed to be much faster than HDDs, a plausible explanation for this is that the SSDs used in the Eee PC are not the best available. At only $800, you can't expect premium SSDs to be used. Following this reasoning, it would be possible to assume that SSDs in UMPCs will usually have a lower transfer rate as compared to conventional HDDs.

Slower access time: Due to the way HDDs read data, there is considerable time lost as the drive head searches across the platter for information. SSDs will always beat HDDs in this aspect.

Higher burst rate: The HD Tune website defines Burst Rate as "the highest speed (in megabytes per second) at which data can be transferred from the drive interface (IDE or SCSI for example) to the operating system." In this case, we can see that we have a higher burst rate on the MSI Wind. What does this mean? Going by the definition, it tells us that the MSI Wind is able to read cached data three times as fast as the Eee PC. Also, the MSI Wind's HDD does not have its transfer speeds bottlenecked by the burst rate, as compared to the Eee PC's SSDs. If one were to replace the 80GB HDD with a faster one, it would be possible to obtain better HDD performance with the MSI Wind.

[doody]

A quick summary of the differences:

HDD

• Higher transfer rate
• Varying transfer rate
• Slower access time
• Higher burst rate

SSD

• Slower transfer rate
• Consistent transfer rate
• Faster access time
• Slower burst rate

Hence, I think the MSI Wind will take the lead when it comes to re-opening recently used applications and files that are still stored in cache, while the Eee PC should be able to have a good advantage over the MSI Wind in terms of boot-up timings.

A very interesting read for those who want to read more on SSD vs HDD: http://www.computerworld.com/action/...intsrc=kc_feat
I suspect the article is slightly biased, but it shows that SSDs are not always faster than HDDs, unless you look at numbers only.

[minitaz]

Great review and insight on SSD vs HDD. Just offering my 2 cents on SSD vs HDD - Shockproofing.

I believe more people will be willing to 'accidentally drop' their SSD UMPC than a HDD one. Myself being quite clumsy at times, might have more tendancy to drop a 9 ", than a 14" notebook.

Personally, I find Wind PC's spec to be almost perfect - just the screen size to be slightly too big for my preference when looking for a UMPC. Then again, the keyboard size is nice, and I doubt it can happen with a smaller screen. Delimas Delimas Delimas..

[doody]

If anyone is interested, there is an IRC channel for the MSI Wind.

irc://irc.freenode.net/msiwind

Looking for more people to fill it up - it's rather empty now.

[doody]

Originally Posted by minitaz

Great review and insight on SSD vs HDD. Just offering my 2 cents on SSD vs HDD - Shockproofing.

I believe more people will be willing to 'accidentally drop' their SSD UMPC than a HDD one. Myself being quite clumsy at times, might have more tendancy to drop a 9 ", than a 14" notebook.

Personally, I find Wind PC's spec to be almost perfect - just the screen size to be slightly too big for my preference when looking for a UMPC. Then again, the keyboard size is nice, and I doubt it can happen with a smaller screen. Delimas Delimas Delimas..

Oh yes, shock-proofing. But a laptop shouldn't be dropped, no? Of course if it is accidentally dropped then the SSD will be more resistant to any damage as compared to the HDD. Still, I haven't heard of anyone who crashed their HDD by dropping their laptop .

[vrzone24hrs]

the wind is more evolutionary than revolutionary...

there's really nothing extraordinary abt the wind..OTOH the eee701 series was the 1st to come out with ssd factor plus the most modded & hackable umpc today, the eee900series with its multitouch touchpad, the via openbook with 2 cams(1 for video conference,1 for recording lectures etc, hsdpa builtin..) are all considered revolutionary in design & use..

some may argue the wind is the 1st to utilize the intel atom cpu but really that is only a short gain given in 1 week computex will showcase more atom umpcs..

if you seen enough of subnotebooks before the term umpc became popular...the msi wind is in old company given the form factors & the likes of say,the Libretto L1/2/3/5 series or even the Vaio Picturebook C1MT series albeit different cpus then..back in 2001/2 they were already using 1.8inch 40/40/80gb hdd with 1024x600 or 1280x600 resolutions despite the high prices then for a very small niche market..the reality of evolution of competition then made this all much more affordable now....

no big deal on the msi wind..it's juz a watered down subnotebook whose design has been borrowed from previous established japanese subnotebooks and just affordable..that's all..

anything special on the materials? carbon fibre? classy keyboard and high quality 1280x600 glossy screen like the the hp2133? good afterservice like asus or hp? again you can laways fall back on your true & tested rebuttal of "what do you expect for this price? anyway...lol

the tests so far only proved that cpu and batt life is still somewhat the same with the eee900 series..nothing revolutuionary there?

You're quickly statisfied to call all that revolutionary. The Asus EEE is indeed a radical innovation (it created a new type of market), the others, including (but not more or less so) the Wind, are build from architectural product innovations, which means they're not revolutionary aka radical. (This abstract should provide enough information to tell the difference.)

Anyway, you may be unimpressed with the Wind, but I'm glad MSI chose not to overdo it on some areas, only to cut back on others. The high screen resolution of the HP is nice, but in my opinion pretty overkill at the small screensize. Glossy is also not going to make me jump with happiness, quite the opposite. The VIA processor is another part we can find in the HP... "An object is only as strong as its weakest point".

I'm not interested in a netbook that excels on one or more points but seriously fails on (an)other(s). What I'm interested in is the right combination of features for an acceptable price. The MSI Wind isn't perfect, yet it comes closest to what I'm looking for.

BTW. The MSI got a near normal keyboard size too. And you may want to have a look at the LED backlight. Further, the Atom processor, while not unique to the Wind, isn't exactly old technology either. The Wind is certainly not revolutionary, yet also certainly not as plain as you make it sound like either.