Performance
First and foremost, the time taken to boot Windows XP. On our count, the Wind takes approximately one minute and three seconds to boot into Windows, but it doesn't feel that long as the device is surprisingly nippy.
Once in Windows, day-to-day tasks such as web browsing and using Microsoft Office are a piece of cake for the Wind's 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor. Microsoft Word 2007 takes seconds to load, and CPU usage whilst browsing YouTube videos stands at around 50 to 60 per cent. That's perfectly acceptable, but start clicking around or multitasking, and you'll find Flash-based videos may begin to stutter on occasion.
But the legions of gamers out there probably have just one question; can it run Crysis? No, of course not, this isn't a gaming machine, but that hasn't stopped us from attempting to run a game that's aged well: Quake 4. Our tests showed that at a measly 640x480 resolution with quality settings on low, the Wind can barely get the game running. We managed an average of just 10fps.
As expected, Wind isn't a gaming machine. We'll be sticking to Solitaire on this one.
So, let's put MSI's little device to the DivX test. If you're the type who'll want to compress video files whilst on the move, how long will it take? To find out, we used DivX 6.1 to compress a 426MiB HD video. With bitrate at 1,700kbit/s and quality set to high, it took a fraction over nine minutes. It takes a while, but Wind will get it done.
These benchmarks, however, aren't the real judge of Wind's usability. The question is, can Wind do what your regular laptop can do, in its smaller-and-lighter shell? The answer to that is yes. There's a few little quirks, you may struggle with the low-res screen, and multi-tasking might have you waiting a few extra seconds for things to load, but on the whole it's a pleasant experience.
One potential downside, we might add, is Windows XP. Though there's no shortage of negative reports concerning Windows Vista, it takes some getting used to when downgrading from Vista to XP. Users who've become familiar with Microsoft's flagship OS may find XP to be a large step backward. XP's cumbersome networking features make Wi-Fi setup a chore, and the OS is a whole lot more basic-looking than we remember.
