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MSI Wind U110 ECO netbook finally surfaces, promises 15+ hours of battery life

by Parm Mann on 22 September 2009, 12:23

Tags: Wind U110 ECO, MSI

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qat36

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Been a while since MSI announced its Wind U110 ECO netbook, but the system, pictured below, has today finally made its way to US retail priced at $399.99 (roughly £250).

The U110 ECO sports a 10in display offering a 1,024x600 resolution, and though that's far from exciting, what's useful is MSI's quoted "best-in-class battery life" of 15+ hours. That's made possible by a larger-than-usual nine-cell battery, along with the use of an Intel Poulsbo chipset.

Inside the latest Wind users will find a 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z530, a Silverthorne part that when coupled with the Poulsbo US15W chipset forms Intel's Menlow platform - complete with Intel GMA500 integrated graphics.

Rounding off the spec is 1GB of DDR2 memory, a 160GB hard drive, Wireless N, Bluetooth and Gigabit Ethernet connectivity, as well as a four-in-one card reader and a built-in 1.3megapixel webcam. It's by no means a mobile powerhouse, but it could become a popular option if MSI's promise of over 15 hours of use from a single charge holds true. Sadly, there's still no mention of UK availability.

HEXUS Forums :: 3 Comments

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Posted by Scarlet Infidel - Wed 23 Sep 2009 03:00
While impressive on paper, I'm not really sure of the point of 15 hour battery life at the moment. I'd rather have 8 hour battery on machine 2-3 times as fast.
Posted by Saracen - Wed 23 Sep 2009 03:28
The point is for those that are going to be a long time between a convenient place and time to recharge. Also, quoted times are usually derived from a benchmark process that can be repeated in a controlled fashion to give a consistency between different devices …. but won't necessarily represent what you get in actual usage, which say be more or less.

To me, the benefit of 15 hours would be, for instance, on a long journey, or for use in a conference, when I can't be sure it'll be possible or convenient to recharge. The only people that would buy a machine with exceptionally good battery life will be those for whom that is the most important factor, and speed isn't as important. For me, if it'll run Word and one or two other apps, and let me check email etc, then it's powerful enough, and anything extra that decreases battery life is a negative.

It appears this one may suit me down to the ground, but isn't for you.
Posted by Scarlet Infidel - Wed 23 Sep 2009 09:31
Saracen
The point is for those that are going to be a long time between a convenient place and time to recharge.

Obviously I understand that :). I just mean that a full working day of use is probably sufficient for most people (I dont like to work 15 hour days and most developed places have charging points). Obviously more is always better and I look forward to the time when you can take your laptop away for a week and not need to take a charger.

For those interested in very long battery life and not bothered about high performance then ARM smartbooks will probably be the way to go, especially as ARM has announced the Cortex A9 dual core can run at 2GHz (though that particular CPU wont be available for a while yet).