Over the past few months we have had quite a few looks at the various flavours of the Asus Eee PC. But now, because of the fantastic success of the Eee, copycat netbooks are coming out of the woodwork in an attempt to grab a slice of the action. Action is definitely the the right word as well, you only have to look at the most popular laptops on PriceGrabber  to see that,  the majority are Eee PC’s or other netbooks. Anyway it is definitely time to look at the growing competition. We started by looking at the Acer Aspire One a week ago and today I thought we should have a look at the MSI Wind.

MSI Wind

Due to its 10″ screen this netbook is a direct competitor to the Asus Eee PC 1000 and the price is also in the right ballpark (with the 80GB black version being about ₤30 cheaper).  The screen is the now fairly standard 1024 x 600-pixel resolution found on the more recent netbooks but the bigger size giving a better feel.  The bigger size also allows a near full size keyboard which should please people who feel cramped on the smaller notebooks.

Under the bonnet

In terms of specifications the MSI Wind is pretty similar to all the other netbooks on the market. It sports an Intel Atom processor,  1GB of RAM, WiFi,  a card reader, a 1.3 MP webcam, microphone and 3 USB ports.  However the Wind does come with either a 80GB or 120GB standard hard drive (no SSD here).  The 120 GB option is by far the biggest drive available in a netbook. There is a choice of batteries and a number of reviews have reporting good battery life with the 6 cell version.

Good looks

The MSI Wind is one of, if not the best, looking netbooks out there and that combined with the 10″ form factor, which in my opinion is the better size for a netbook, means that it a very serious contender for anyone wanting to take part in the netbook revolution.