Sleek lines
CULVBased on the Core 2 Mobile architecture that provides the brains behind the majority of mid-priced laptops available today, the CULV (consumer ultra-low voltage) platform enables motherboard manufacturers to design thinner, lighter laptops by, in the main, reducing the thermal characteristics of the chips.
As an example, a CULV-based U9600 dual-core chip draws a maximum of 10W under load, compared with 35W for a T5740, clocked in at the same 1.6GHz speed. CULV brings other benefits, too, such as better display-power regulation, and they combine to increase battery life to a genuinely usable four hours in most cases.
Intel is transitioning the CULV platform from featuring single-core processors to dual-core, and we expect MSI will follow suit across a range of laptops.
X-Slim X600
The X600 is the largest model in the X-Slim range, sporting a 15.6in screen, but take it out of the box and it looks impossibly thin.
Less than one-inch-thick at every point, it will certainly appeal to folk who place aesthetics high on the list of criteria. Unlike Apple, the logo isn't illuminated when the power is switched on. MSI manufactures an AMD Yukon-based X610 model, as well.
The plastic top has a pearlescent finish that looks rather fetching when bathed in light, yet it's pretty adept at holding on to fingerprints, which can be annoying as MSI doesn't bundle a cleaning cloth in the package.
Most laptops with 15.6in screens weigh between 2.5kg and 3.5kg. A combination of lightweight plastic and cooling keeps the weight down to 2.135kg, including a skinny battery.
Wireless connectivity comes in the form of Intel's 5100 a/g/n card and Bluetooth.
Touted as an all-round laptop, MSI's shoehorned a discrete Mobility Radeon HD 4330 graphics card with 512MB of on-board memory. It is leagues ahead of any integrated solution, which will show up in the gaming benchmarks, and impressive given the 20mm chassis height the company has to work with.
The review model ships with an Intel Core 2 Duo Mobile U9600 chip, clocked in at 1.6GHz and supported by 3MB of L2 cache and, externally, 4GB of DDR2 RAM. Performance, then, should be strong across a wide range of applications, especially gaming.
