Listen to the chatter of the reps at the stand, and you could quickly believe that the MSI Wind U160 is the shape of netbooks to come. Forget the slightly squat designs of yesteryear: the U160 is slim and beautiful enough to have won an iF Product Design Award. And it really is slim: 25mm at its thickest point. As this “official” MSI photo shows, it brushes up rather nicely too:

It certainly represents a further blurring between the lines of ultraportable and netbook, even if its core components are stuck at the feeble end of the scale: the 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450 may be all-new and slightly faster than the 1.6GHz N270, but with 1GB of RAM few people will want this as their main laptop.

Despite this, when I played with the MSI Wind U160 at CES Unveiled (shortly after my toying with the MSI X-Slim X420) I found it surprisingly nippy. Indeed, the Windows Experience Index gave it a score of 3.1 for Graphics. That compares to 2.1 for the previous generation of Intel’s Atom processor and graphics chipset.

The golden finish to the keyboard area can’t hide that it still feels plasticky to the touch, though, and things weren’t helped by the fact the pre-production unit on show had been prodded and probed by a number of people: the keyboard was actually coming away at the corner.

As with the MSI X-Slim X420, the trackpad has an unusual finish. But because the nobbles stick out of the trackpad on the Wind U160, as opposed to the dimples of the X420, it’s much more obvious in use. While I’m sure most people will get used to this, others may find the design a little irksome.

Few will complain about battery life. My friendly MSI rep suggested the U160 will last for at least seven hours on a single charge. It adds up to an interesting netbook, although we’ll have to wait until late February before getting the finished article into the PC Pro Labs: this netbook is still so new that it’s not actually entered into production.