Mini laptops have been a surprise hit over the last year or so, following the launch of the original Asus Eee PC. Other vendors have since brought out numerous models to try and emulate its success.

The latest to become available is the oddly named Wind from Micro Star International (MSI), a firm best known for its motherboards and 'bare bones' PC and server systems.

Despite the dubious name, it seems to be rather a well designed mini laptop, just slightly larger than the Asus Eee PC 900 and 901, thus making room for a keyboard that users can live with and a decent 10in screen.

It is based on Intel's 1.6GHz Atom processor and has 1GB RAM, and unlike the Eee PC it has an 80GB hard drive instead of Flash SSD storage. It also ships with Windows XP, although this is the Home edition rather than XP Professional.

While screens smaller than 12in are considered too small for business use by some experts, I found the Wind's 10in display with its 1024 x 600 resolution quite comfortable for productivity applications, and the system's keyboard is large enough for typing at a reasonable speed.

The evaluation unit I saw had Microsoft Office 2007 installed, and the Wind seemed to handle applications such as Word and Excel with little difficulty. It would thus seem to make a good mobile system for workers needing to access documents and their email while on the road.

However, the downside on all small systems like this is usually battery life. I didn't have enough time using the Wind to test this, but MSI rates it at up to three hours with the three-cell standard battery pack, and this is likely to be an optimistic figure. An optional six-cell unit will provide longer life, but this bumps up the weight from just over a kilogram to about 1.2kg.

The Wind has three USB ports, a slot for SD Card and Memory Stick Flash disks, VGA and Ethernet ports, and includes 802.11b/g Wi-Fi. It costs £329.

25 Jul 2008