Digital Home Thoughts: The Tech Report Reviews MSI's Wind Netbook

"With variants of the Eee PC dominating the burgeoning netbook market, it seems as though every manufacturer is now rushing to squeeze out its variant on the theme...The Wind U100 sits as a sort of standard bearer for this new wave of netbooks. It's a remarkably balanced piece of engineering, delivering on nearly all of MSI's early promises. But rather than facing off against the original Eee PC, the Wind must now contend with a fresh batch of rivals, including HP's Mini-Note, Acer's Aspire one, and new Eee PC 900 and 1000 series models from Asus. Keep reading to see whether MSI has crafted a worthy competitor in the U100, and whether the system is a compelling netbook in its own right."

This is the netbook that I've ordered for myself...well, the 6-cell battery version, not the 3-cell version they reviewed here. As much as I loved the design of the HP 2133 Mini Note, having both an under-powered processor incapable of playing DVD-resolution video and only having 90 minutes of battery life (at best) was just too much in the way of compromise. After look at the Acer Aspire One and the MSI Wind, I settled on the MSI Wind - but looking at the review of the Asus EEE PC 1000, I'm suddenly feeling a bit torn. I'm not interested in the SSD version, so I'd get the 1000H version, which I can get locally for $549 - right around the same price as the MSI Wind. The hardware is damn near identical, so it comes down to things like the screen, the battery life, etc. Choices, choices...