I recently purchased my first netbook - the MSI Wind. I chose it because of its low price ($309 at Best Buy), its 10" screen (the top end for a netbook), and relatively roomy keyboard (roomy for a netbook, that is). I strongly recommend it.
The pluses: The low price, 10" screen, and availability of all the basics were what attracted me to this netbook. It has the same atom processor as most others, has a 160GB hard drive, and comes with 1GB of RAM. I added 1GB of RAM by buying a $13 RAM module from Newegg (shipping included!). Now, it's faster than my main notebook, which is about 4 years old. It travels well and does everything I need it to do.
The minuses: Each time I switch to the netbook, it takes a little while to get used to the keyboard. The keyboard is small and has a few peculiarities, most annoyingly the reversal of postions between the CTRL and Fn keys in the lower left. Having a second computer comes with the challenge of keeping it sync'd with my main computer. I accomplish this for all uses except for Outlook, by using Windows Live Sync, which works great.
One other "minus" is that the documentation is limited and what exists on the web is hard to find. I found a good review and description at http://www.laptopmag.com/review/laptops/msi-wind.aspx and some good product documentation download links from MSI at http://global.msi.com.tw/index.php?func=downloaddetail&type=manual&maincat_no=135&prod_no=1474
Other notes: There are a few applications that I don't want to put on the netbook, and for those I use LOGMEIN to access my main computer. This slows me down a bit, but saves me from buying and installing second copies of software, and makes that data a bit more secure by keeping it at home. I also carry around an encrypted copy of ROBOFORM portable on a thumb drive This way I don't have to sync another device, yet I still have the convenience of not having to rememberso many passwords.
I'll be updating this post as I learn more about this netbook. But, so far, I strongly recommend it.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment