pros:

-lcd is pretty nice
-the i/o is actually good for its size (gigabit ethernet!)
-backlit keyboard
-128GB SSD is standard
-choice of either silver or black, depending on your taste

cons:

-its made by dell
-its not as thin as the apple’s, lenovo’s or msi’s ultraportable computers
-the screen akwardly isnt all the way placed in the back of the laptop….
-$1999 for crap insides – 1.2Ghz C2D, 2GB, integrated crap graphics (intel), hell, even the macbook air (overpriced apple crap as people say) has better specs than the adamo…and is priced LOWER than the dell!
-dell includes vista on this? what are they thinking? low-end cpu, barely enough memory, and a weak gpu = crap.
-no one is going to immediately think dell when they are looking for a high-end ultraportable computer
-came out too late, with almost no advertising to back it up

rating: 4/10. its meh in the tech world. great looking, with a nice screen and i/o, but as a computer, its crap.

my question is this – what is the point of this machine in the first place, when there are better computers out there for less money? I honestly think that everyone should stay the hell away from it. however, if you actually do end up buying one, you deserve to get punched in the stomach. repeatedly.

Introduction:

it all started with the Austin 100mhz pentium laptop i used in 1995…i never knew that all that power could be packed in such a tiny form factor (shuttles werent out then yet podar). then eventually i forgot about them for a while because desktops were moving ahead so fast, and laptops would be updated way too late before the next wave/generation of technology would appear. then in 2002, my brother shocked me when he said that he was going to sell his desktop and buy a laptop. i mean, why would he do that? he had a very nice system (at that time) and the performance he would have from the desktop would be lost when going to a laptop, but it would obviously more than make up for it when he told me about the specs…it turned out to be a dell inspiron 8200, and bar none, i think that still is my favorite laptop. it wasnt cheap ($1500), but he had gotten all the right/necessary upgrades to it that i would do to todays laptops; upgrade to the highest gpu, decent cpu for the price, highest screen, and buy your own memory and hard drive seperately, as well as not including any software (thanks suprnova.org! god i wish that torrent site was still up..). when he finally got it, i was completely amazed. it ran all the games i wanted at close to full settings, it ran at 1600×1200 (which was amazing on that display), and even though it was a pentium 4-m (different than a mobile pentium 4 mind you) at 1.6Ghz, it was blazing fast compared to what he had before, along with 512MB of ram. it was really a great machine, there was nothing wrong with it (well it didnt have usb 2.0, which sucked), until he told me the dreaded sentence just a few short years later:

“i’m going to switch to apple.”

wtf? why? what advantage did apple have over windows? it used some “foreign” cpu (powerpc), and it was highly expensive compared to any windows laptop/desktop out there. there wasnt anything special about it (performance wise) that set it apart. but when he finally sold the dell, and showed me his mac (he got a powerbook g4 15″), i wasnt sold. he kept telling me all these cool addons/extras he could have gotten, but they all costed SO damn much (backlit keyboard, bluetooth, etc). the only thing that amazed me was that it had the best ports on any laptop, the whole case was aluminum, and that it had a slot-load cd drive..the more he told me about it and the more i used it…i secretly began to like apple..i never told anyone about it because i was a raging windows fanboy all those years, and who knows what everyone (my friends circle) would have said to me. but that doesnt matter now, because last september, i finally switched myself to a macbook pro, and i consider that to be the best laptop (when it actually has up-to-date specs, and not previous gen specs) for the money. but right after school ended, i was going to sell it so i can get the most resale value for it. that didnt happen, as i gave it to my dad and we ended up selling his 13″ black macbook. we did get like 90% of the money for it, and coupled with the various computer crap we sold, i have enough money to buy any macbook pro (15″ or 17″) or even the highest-end imac. of course, apple hasnt even updated their laptop lines to montevina (or whatever the hell they’ll use next). so im stuck waiting…and i got tired of waiting, so i ended up buying a VERY small and VERY capable notebook, called the msi wind.

(sorry that was a long intro, but i liked writing it haha)

Design:

holy crap…this thing is freaking TINY! it is WAY smaller than any notebook that ive ever used, but it still packs the same performance found in todays regular notebooks. the build quality is also excellent, it doesnt feel cheap, it doesnt have any bendable/breakable parts, and its very nicely built (and easy to take apart too). you can also get it in white, black, pink, and some weirdly designed silvery one with hearts all over it (of course i got the black…but i was debating about getting the pink instead…..). this thing weights 2.2lbs (2.6 if you got a 6 cell battery), and its extremely light/portable. i think looks very professional for this kind of laptop. you honestly need to see/hold one to believe it. the pictures dont do it justice here…its a SUPER small notebook.

Display:

it is simply awesome. 10″ (compared to 7″, 8.9″ on other EEE laptops) is HUMONGOUS on this type of laptop, and best of all, its LED backlit and matte as well (i hate glossy screens). the resolution is standard on these screens, 1024×600, and im sure msi could have easily increased the resolution, but it would further strain most peoples eyes, so im pretty sure thats why it stayed fairly conservative. i actually have no problem with it. the screen is also VERY bright (for fools like podar who need it so bright that they’ll go blind), and the viewing angles are way better than i had originally thought. and thank god you can move the screen all the way back and forth (compared to the macbook and macbook pro), which is a nice plus.

Keyboard/Touchpad:

you would think that since this is a very small laptop, some compromises would definitely have to be made with the keyboard. luckily and happily, this isnt the case. unlike most netbook/eee manufacturers, msi has actually a very typable and very nicely laid out keyboard. its really nice to type on, and doesnt have that mushy feel of the keys, so it doesnt feel cheap in anyway. the downside (for some people) is that the comma, period, and slash keys are a bit smaller than the rest of the keys on the keyboard. and if you are a laptop user, im sure you know about the “fn” key and how its used for secondary functions…well its either a love or hate thing, but the fn key is placed where the ctrl key is. i dont care cause im coming from my macbook pro which also had it this way, but people coming from a desktop or another laptop with the ctrl key then the fn key will get frustrated/disoriented at first…provided that you actually use the fn key at all (which i know some people dont, cause they dont even know what it is/never use it). as for the touchpad, the pointing is fine, and there are no scrolling features (not yet, cause the included drivers are gay and if you buy the 6 cell version you get an even worse chipset/driver), so you have to keep tapping the corners if you want to scroll up/down/left/right, which takes some time getting used to, but its manageable. also note that most laptops have 2 seperate buttons for left and right clicking…on the msi, its one single button, for both left and right clicking. this can get annoying sometimes, and i wish msi had included two seperate buttons.

Ports/Features:

3 usb 2.0, vga out, 10/100 ethernet, sd card slot (SDHC compatible thank god), headphone and microphone make this a very capable laptop. the downside is that there is no cd rom drive at all, but you can plug in an external cd drive and it’ll work just fine with it. no issues whatsoever. the only thing i would say that is missing is firewire, but this kind of laptop doesnt need it. also includes the 1.3mp webcam and mic, along with bluetooth 2.0 (uses the toshiba stack, and not the standard windows or widcomm one), and wifi (b/g). as for tinkering enthusiasts like me, you can open it pretty easily and add 1GB more of ram, as well as any size laptop sata hd you want. i ended up maxing the ram to 2GB, and putting in my 200GB 7200rpm hd in it.

Performance:

This cpu is outstanding. its very capable and it has my aboslute favorite feature; hyperthreading! but since it has hyperthreading, that means its a single core with a “fake” second core (stupid windows xp). the gpu is the always crappy intel gma 950, but it does the job, and i didnt expect it to play crysis on insane settings (obviously). however, it did play warcraft 3 on medium settings at 800×600 (war3 is too old to do widescreen and the hacks out there just stretch it) just fine. it originally came with xp home sp3 and it didnt come installed with much stuff either, which was a good thing. it was fast enough out of box, and it was even faster when i reinstalled to xp pro (moreso because it was a fresh install with no crapware on it). just dont expect it to play games newer than 2004 (low to possibly medium settings), play/stream hd content, and do cpu intensive stuff. this cpu is pretty basic, but its pretty good for what it is.

Sound:

it has two speakers…im not expecting 5.1 dolby digital sound from them.

Misc (stuff that most people wouldnt care about):

runs my favorite AMI bios, you can change ahci, boot order, and a few other things. otherwise, its not an overclocking machine (however you can use overclocking programs in windows and overclock it to 2.0Ghz, which is pointless). it has indicators for just about everything, like bluetooth (its a blue led!), wifi, caps/scroll/num (i forget if it has numlock im not sure) lock, power, hdd, and sleep. it has 9 screws at the bottom to unscrew if you ever need to replace the hdd/memory (you void the warranty if you open the last screw, as it has a warranty void sticker on it, but cmon…its me, anchit the geek/nerd!), and its pretty easy to replace anything. battery lasts just over 2 hours with the 3 cell version i got, and i think with the 6 cell option, you get more than 3-4 hours. i didnt really care/need it cause i hardly go with my laptop unplugged/without the ac adapter (btw the ac adapter is TINY) and i wanted it to be as light as possible. it also comes with a restore dvd with windows xp home sp3, and msi includes a nifty thin/small travel bag too.

Conclusion:

Overall, this is the best small EEE pc/laptop ive used. it has all the right features, AWESOME display, and its extremely thin/light. the keyboard rocks, although the touchpad takes some getting used to, and for most people, they would want the 6 cell battery so they can use it on car trips/airplane rights or whatnot. the included software is decent, but not outstanding. it has a pretty big hard drive (80GB) thats easily upgradeable to whatever you want, and has 1GB of ram as stock. if you wanted a small, college-worthy, fast performing (for the price/size), and a little bit of a showing-off/flashy laptop, this is a damn fine choice: if you dont care about a cd rom drive that is…which i dont.

9.5/10.