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New laptop
Dec. 4th, 2008 09:29 pmI got the MSI Wind laptop yesterday. I did the normal imaging of the hard drive before ever booting it, then created a recovery DVD, then started hacking out the junk software they ship with it (MS Office 60 day trial, Norton Internet Security trial) and installed Firefox and OpenOffice.
I'm very impressed, honestly. It's really just about perfect; the keyboard is quite usable (I'm typing on it now), the screen is sharp and bright, and the thing is really pretty darn fast, considering. Above all, it's just the perfect size. You can carry it in one hand easily, and you can put it in your lap for a long time and it doesn't get hot on the bottom.
The SD card reader is SDHC compliant - they don't say and there were conflicting reports. So that's good for compatibility with my camera and camcorder.
The keyboard is great except, like EVERY netbook for some stupid reason, the Ctrl and Fn keys are switched. Even Lenovo does this even though everyone gripes about it. Unfathomable. I might play with remapping them, but I wonder if the Fn stuff is trapped in the BIOS since it's used to turn devices on and off.
I don't like that the power brick is the conventional brick style; the AC power cord leading to it is actually bigger in volume than the brick itself. IMHO the DC cord leading from it to the laptop is plenty long enough and they should have just made the thing a wall-wart like ASUS does. It does use a standard-ish power cord, so I may buy a spare and cut it down to 3 inches for travel.
It was interesting that it came with a trial copy of WinRAR on it - I've been a RAR fan for a while and it's nice to see them get some manufacturer contracts.
Overall not much shovelware - Dell puts so much crap on their machines that it typically takes me 2 to 3 hours to remove all the junk. This one took 5 minutes.
Above all, I guess I'm just floored by the fact that I got a laptop that's all I really ever wanted in a laptop, for $299.
...and I got the rebate junk done.
I'm very impressed, honestly. It's really just about perfect; the keyboard is quite usable (I'm typing on it now), the screen is sharp and bright, and the thing is really pretty darn fast, considering. Above all, it's just the perfect size. You can carry it in one hand easily, and you can put it in your lap for a long time and it doesn't get hot on the bottom.
The SD card reader is SDHC compliant - they don't say and there were conflicting reports. So that's good for compatibility with my camera and camcorder.
The keyboard is great except, like EVERY netbook for some stupid reason, the Ctrl and Fn keys are switched. Even Lenovo does this even though everyone gripes about it. Unfathomable. I might play with remapping them, but I wonder if the Fn stuff is trapped in the BIOS since it's used to turn devices on and off.
I don't like that the power brick is the conventional brick style; the AC power cord leading to it is actually bigger in volume than the brick itself. IMHO the DC cord leading from it to the laptop is plenty long enough and they should have just made the thing a wall-wart like ASUS does. It does use a standard-ish power cord, so I may buy a spare and cut it down to 3 inches for travel.
It was interesting that it came with a trial copy of WinRAR on it - I've been a RAR fan for a while and it's nice to see them get some manufacturer contracts.
Overall not much shovelware - Dell puts so much crap on their machines that it typically takes me 2 to 3 hours to remove all the junk. This one took 5 minutes.
Above all, I guess I'm just floored by the fact that I got a laptop that's all I really ever wanted in a laptop, for $299.
...and I got the rebate junk done.
