MSI Wind U100 review

MSI's Wind did very well when we reviewed it in our last round-up, getting five stars but no award, due to its price. Since then, however, its price has fallen.

The Wind has proved a popular netbook and different versions of it have been sold by numerous other manufacturers, including Advent. This model is black and its lid has a glossy sheen, so it picks up fingerprints easily.

The biggest flaw of most rebranded Wind variants is their short battery life of around two-and-a-half hours. This model has a bulkier battery that lasted nearly five hours. This means that this netbook is good enough for almost a day's work away from a power socket. Extra batteries can also be bought, so you can extend your working time if needed.

The large battery makes the otherwise slender design chunkier to hold, but it also props up the keyboard at an angle that can make typing easier. Fortunately, the U100 still fits into the bundled slip case and, at just 1.3kg, is light enough to be carried anywhere.

The Wind's keyboard has a large and comfortable layout. Some of the punctuation keys are smaller than the others, though, and the Fn key takes the Ctrl key's usual place. The touchpad is small but accurate, although the small buttons lack feedback.

The 10.2in screen has a matt, anti-glare finish, but it's as bright as the netbooks here with glossy screens. There's plenty of storage space thanks to the 160GB hard disk. Only Asus's N10 has a larger hard disk. There's no 3G modem, but Bluetooth is built in, so you could use a Bluetooth-equipped 3G mobile phone as a wireless broadband modem instead of plugging in a USB modem.

The 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 processor and 1GB of RAM are what we'd expect in a netbook at this price.

MSI's Wind is a great netbook thanks to its comfortable keyboard and long battery life. Samsung's N110 has even better battery life, but it's £60 more, making the Wind an excellent choice for most people.