Right on cue, MSI have just sent us a few shots of their forthcoming Wind U120, which will be officially launching in January. Draft-N and HSDPA 3.5G will be integrated as standard, and we presume the rest of the specification will be the usual netbook fare. So you can expect an Atom N270 processor, 1 or 2 gigabytes  of memory and probably a 120GB hard drive as a bare minimum given MSI’s propensity towards mechanical disk drives in their notebooks. We have a gut feeling that it might even be the first netbook in the range to sport Intel’s forthcoming N330 Dual-Core Atom processor.

We’re pleased to see that the slightly boring, curvaceous form of the original Wind has been supplanted by a more angular, stylised two-tone design – perhaps in an attempt to inject a bit of a much-needed style into the netbook blueprint, in a similar vein to the Asus’ S101. 

Ergonomically, the U120 looks like it shares its predecessor’s keyboard, but those aggravated by the U100 single, rockable mouse button will be pleased to see that it seems to have been replaced by two discrete buttons.

Casting an eye around the U120’s chassis reveals 3 USB ports, 2 audio minijacks, VGA and an Ethernet port. Whether MSI’s newest arrival has any more surprises up its sleeve, we’ll just have to wait and see. Rest assured, we’ll be pestering MSI for a first hands-on look on an aggravatingly regular basis.  But, until then, you’ll just have to feast your eyes on the rest of the press shots below. 

You may notice that they’re the same size, which is a bit of a disappointment; a self-proclaiming revolutionary update could do with taking up a bit less pocket space, I think. Nevertheless, it’s still perfectly portable – just not as much as my non wind-up MP3 player is.

The wind-up handle is also exactly the same, and we got a similar charge from using it: crank like crazy for five minutes and you will get the majority of the way through a short album, while you rest your aching hand.

The software, though, looks like it’s come on a long way, which is a relief, although it’s still infuriatingly complicated to use and in need of yet another dollop of refinement. Keep your eyes peeled for a full review coming soon…

So we were even more pleased to discover that the very same laptop was going to be available from PC World for signicantly less cash – £32 to be precise at £238 exc VAT. Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, we reckon.

Aside from the slightly different colour scheme – the Advent 4211 Netbook has a black lid where our MSI review sample was all decked out in white – it’s an identical piece of kit. A decent 10in, 1,024 x 600 resolution wide screen is complemented by one of the most usable keyboards we’ve yet seen in a netbook – and the trackpad’s not bad either.

Inside is an 1.6GHz Atom N270 processor and this is backed up by 1GB of RAM and an 80GB hard disk and around the edges is a decent array of ports and expansion slots. With this specification, the 4211’s XP installation will run at a fair old lick.

The battery is, unfortunately, also the same – with a minimal capacity of 2,200mAh promising similar, underwhelming battery life.

Still, we gave the MSI Wind U100 five stars in our original review, and the lower price means this version looks even better value for that rating. Look out for a full review very soon…

In the current issue of PC Pro, which has just hit the newsstands, I’ve written a feature in which I document my attempt to leave the National Grid for a week and run my mobile phone, MP3 player and notebook on solar and wind power. If you want to know how I got on then you’ll have to go and buy an issue, but I’ve already received an email from one reader to let me know that he’s been investigating exactly this sort of thing for 16 years already.

Chris Dixon has been playing around with sustainable power for well over a decade, starting with a wind-powered 386, and has got more interested in solar power in recent years as the cost of panels has fallen. The image above is of two 15 Watt panels he has installed in his garden on top of his shower room.

“I set them up on a home built frame so they could be rotated and tilted to track the sun,” explains Chris. “This increases their output considerably but is a hassle! So now I point them due South and tilt them three times during the year to get an optimum sort of position.”

As well as these panels, which after three years have started to degrade slightly, he also has a mono crystalline panel, which is “far more resilient and more powerful for the same surface area”, and outputs 20 watts.

The electricity harvested from these panels is stored in a battery, but a regulator sits in-between to make sure that the battery doesn’t get overcharged.

“Over charging is a sure fire way of killing a battery so the reg box is essential. A deep cycle battery is best as it can stand being discharged more than, say, a car battery. The leisure batteries are cheaper but not as good,” says Chris.

Chris obviously has a great deal of experience with this sort of thing, and his set up can run his 1GHz ThinkPad for three to four hours a day. If anyone has any questions for him then please leave them in the comments – it would be a shame to waste his expertise.

Since we first caught a glimpse of MSI’s Eee rival, the Wind, we’ve been eagerly waiting to get our hands on one, and just an hour or so ago, one of our lovely contacts at MSI obliged us.

And while the pictures may have looked promising, the Wind is even more alluring in the flesh. The matte white finish looks good, and feels good too. It’s no match for the model looks of HP’s Mini Note 2133, sure, but as our recent review made abundantly clear, looks aren’t everything.

The base feels sturdy enough, and the gentle curves do look rather attractive in a pleasingly plain, understated kind of way. The lid is a little more pliant, and really tugging on it left ripples waving across the display, but it’s clearly strong enough to fend off the odd knock here and there.

But, flip that lid open, and the Wind starts to reveal its star qualities. Its chassis might be a touch larger than any either of its Asus or HP-branded rivals, but MSI has put the extra space to good use. The 10 inch display is bright, crisp and free from any unsightly graininess, and although the resolution is still a mite on the low side, just 1,024 x 600 pixels, it does equal that of the Eee PC 900 and, on the upside, keeps text nice and legible.

And the keyboard? Well, it’s clear that someone at MSI has been listening to the complaints levelled at the Eee and its ilk. The keys stretch right to the edges of the chassis, are well spaced and blessed with a good, impressively positive action. The half-height enter key is a minor annoyance, as is the left Ctrl key being shunted to the right of the FN key, but given the keyboard’s surprisingly spacious layout, we think, given time, that we’ll be able to forgive such minor transgressions.

The Wind’s larger frame also allows for a sensibly sized trackpad. In our brief encounter it proved responsive and true, and the buttons responded with a light click. It’s a far cry from the Mini Note’s curious layout, that’s for sure.

But despite its larger chassis and screen, the MSI doesn’t give anything away to its rivals in the weight department. It tipped the scales at 1.264kg, but as the model we saw had a six-cell battery, and retail units will ship with a three-cell, we’d expect weight to end up much nearer the 1kg mark.



And going by the six-cell battery, stamina looks like it just may be another feather in the Wind’s cap. Windows’ battery meter is far from accurate, but with screen brightness at minimum and wireless on, it projected a battery life of seven hours and 10 minutes. If that’s to be believed then, sitting idle, the Wind’s three-cell will probably last about the same as Asus’ Eee PC 900.

MSI will be producing two versions of the Wind, one with Linux – apparently SUSE Linux of some description, but no word on whether it’s been tweaked to accommodate the beginner user – and the other with Windows XP.

The pre-production model we tinkered with had Windows XP on it, and the transition from Power On to Windows desktop was impressively swift. We tried loading up standard Windows items such as the Control Panel, Device Manager and Windows Media Player and each sprung into life with appreciable haste.

MSI also mentioned the nifty ability to over or underclock the processor as required, depending on whether battery life or absolute performance is the priority.

But, even without any recourse to overclocking, it’s clear that the Wind’s specification looks to be an impressively potent one. The initial batch of Winds will all be the top of the line models boasting an as-yet unnamed processor, 1GB of memory, an 80GB hard disk, 802.11bg, Bluetooth, a 1.3 megapixel webcam and a three-cell battery. Given that those high-end models will be selling for just £329 including the VAT, the Wind begins to look very reasonable indeed. Cheaper, less well-specified models will start to flesh out the line-up around August time.

Even given our brief encounter, MSI’s Wind could finally be the laptop to claim the Eee’s low cost crown. And, dare we say it, it certainly seems the breath of fresh air that the form factor so desperately needs. With review units promised in a matter of weeks, we can barely wait.

My motivation is that while I’d like to work on the train, getting anything done at the moment requires more effort than I’d like. Which, ideally, is no effort at all. At the moment, hammering out a review on the journey home involves lugging a (relatively) heavy laptop in an extra bag, with the respective power cables in case I decide to use it when I get home, too. I’d like to condense this down somewhat, and some sort of smaller, lighter laptop stands out, as I’d be able to slip it into my backpack with everything else.

Given its runaway success, the Eee PC stands out, but there’s already two models to choose from – the original 701, and the newer, slightly bloated 900. However, both, while being undoubtedly brilliant little machines, come with caveats. The original Eee, for instance, has a screen that could be generously described as cramped and, while I use FireFox and OpenOffice at home, they’re both on Windows XP. The Eee’s custom Linux distribution doesn’t sound like it’ll co-operate with Football Manager, and Windows XP costs a bit more. The keyboard also looks a little cramp for my sausage-sized fingers – my colleague Sasha Muller has warned me away from the 701, as I’ll probably spend most of my time on the train deleting letters that I’ve inadvertently hit.

It’s fair to say that the 901 does address many of these problems. The screen, thankfully, is larger, supporting a resolution of 1,024 x 600. The hard disk can be up to 16GB in size – far better for Football Manager, as well as all that work I’ll be doing – and the Celeron processor now uses all of its 900MHz, as opposed to being clocked down to 630MHz, as it was in the 701. It runs XP comfortably thanks to the doubling of RAM – 512MB to 1GB – and weighs not far over a kilogram. It sounds like the ideal train companion, and one that I can slip into my bag with ease. It’s also a better performer than the original Eee.

However, these improvements come at a price – £280 excluding VAT, to be exact. Which is another sticking point – for not much more than that, I could invest in a genuine laptop with a 13in screen. Back in Issue 161’s Light Laptops Labs, nothing stretched beyond 2kg in weight, with 12 and 13in screens the norm. Almost all of these, though, were far more expensive than the little Eee that could, and benchmark scores indicate that virtually all of them are far more capable performers than the Eee.

And then there’s the raft of pretenders to the Eee’s ultra-cheap, ultraportable crown. MSI’s forthcoming Wind should be arriving in the PC Pro Labs pretty soon, and that is promising to be another contender for my cash. However, the top specifications of that model could cost up to £700 which, again, would buy me a very tasty laptop with a 13in screen and, no doubt, a better specification.

The battlelines have been drawn for my wallet’s affection – the Eee 900 will sate my train-working needs, sure, but the price could be a sticking point when better-specified laptops – I’m thinking larger screens, better processors, hard disks and optical drives – could almost as easily fill a niche in my bag, and be far more versatile and powerful for it.

So, any ideas or clues as to where my cash should go? What’s the best small, light and cheap laptop you’ve seen? I’m open to suggestions.

For the past week I’ve been trying out this tiny wind turbine called the HYmini. The fan charges up an internal battery which can power any gadget that connects to its USB port.

I’ve mounted this one on the handlebars of my bike, and my 12-mile commute so far seems to be enough to power my mobile phone. The only downside is that I have to explain what it is to inquisitive cyclists at every red traffic light.

As well as this, the PC Pro offices are currently stuffed full of solar panels, wind-up chargers and various battery packs. It’s all research for a feature coming up in the next issue, which asks if it’s possible to power all of your gadgets with sustainable energy. Check out issue 165 for the answer.

Top Tip: If you ever have to design a “green” gadget, why not make it an attractive colour? Green green products are a cliché.