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Multitouch Wind Top AE2220 All-in-One from MSI Now Shipping

Paul Lilly — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:00:21 -0600

MSI on Wednesday announced it has begun shipping its new Wind Top AE2220 all-in-one desktop PC. The AE2220 takes its place as MSI's flagship all-in-one and expands the company's fast growing Wind Top series.

"The MSI Wind Top is an awesome all-purpose family PC. Share photos, edit videos, play games, watch HD video -- our Ion graphics processor means you can have it all," said Drew Henry, general manger for Ion and GeForce products at Nvidia.

In addition to the Ion platform, the AE2220 boasts an Intel Core 2 Duo T6600 processor clocked at 2.2GHz (Pentium dual-core T4300 also available), a 21.5-inch multitouch display, 4GB of DDR2-800 memory, a 500GB hard drive, optional Blu-ray player, 1.3MP webcam, built-in 6-in-1 card reader, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, two mini-PCI-E expansion slots, IR receiver, and Windows 7 Home Premium.

The new all-in-one is still a no-show at most retailers, though Amazon still has it listed for pre-order for $700.

Image Credit: MSI

MSI Preparing to Launch AMD Neo CPU-fueled 12-inch MSI Wind U230 with Windows 7

Ryan Whitwam — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:11:00 -0600

MSI is preparing to launch a 12-inch Windows 7 netbook that will sit atop its U200 series. The U230 will be very much like the previously released U210, which ran Vista. The only notable differences are the new operating system, and slightly faster AMD Radeon GPU.

The netbook will come with the AMD Neo X2 MV40 CPU at 1.6GHz, up to 4 GB of RAM, an AMD Radeon HD3200, and VGA/HDMI out. There’s none of that Windows 7 Starter here - the PC will come with Windows 7 Home Premium. Pricing is still a mystery, though. The old U210 is going for $429.99, so one would hope that MSI can get the price in under $500.

MSI Creates "Big Bang" with New P55-Based Gaming Motherboards

Paul Lilly — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:05:08 -0500

Lately motherboard manufacturers have been looking to make a splash with their naming schemes, and MSI is no exception. The company's first gaming oriented mobos built around Intel's P55 platform will be dubbed the "Big Bang" series, MSI announced today.

"Unique and innovative, the all-new Big Bang series will deliver the shock and awe of unprecedented experience and expand into its own collection of galaxies," MSI stated in a press release.

Sounds ambitious, and the first galactic board created from the Big Bang series is the Trinergy. Goofy marketing aside, the Trinergy looks promising on paper and comes with 100 percent Hi-c capacitors, a discrete Quantum Wave soundcard, 3-way SLI support, MSI's OC Genie, an external dashboard for on-the-fly overclocking, and some other goodies.

MSI said it plans to follow up the Trinergy with its upcoming Big Bang Fuzion, which will support different GPUs in a single system. Look for Fuzion to land on our home planet sometime before the end of 2009.

Image Credit: MSI

MSI and Gigabyte Optimistic About Notebook Shipment Growth in 2010

Bart Salisbury — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:15:55 -0500

With Annie-like optimism, Micro-Star International (MSI) and Gigabyte Technology are reporting their notebook shipments are up in the second half of the year, and both are looking to tomorrow, when “there’ll be sun.”

MSI chairman Joseph Hsu wasn’t entirely positive in his future outlook, however. Windows 7, according to Hsu, will help pick up lagging notebook sales. But a shortage on optical drives and DRAM, which is expected to continue into 2010, will put a crimp on MSI’s ability to meet expected demand.

Gigabyte, on the other hand, is a behind on its projections to ship 200,000 notebooks in 2009 because of a lousy first half. But, the trend in the third quarter is upward, and Gigabyte expects it will get at least 120,000 notebooks out the door by year’s end. For 2010 Gigabyte vice president Richard Ma expects to ship 300,000 notebooks, with half made in-house, and the other half made by Quanta Computer.

On the netbook side of things, MSI reports that the proportion of netbooks shipped dropped from 50% of all notebooks to 30%. Market demand, according the HSU, for ultra-thin notebooks was also weak. Ultra-thin shipments should pick-up in 2010, however, once Intel starts shipping a dual-core CPU for this market segment.

Image Credit: MSI, Gigabyte

MSI Taps into Tegra for E-book Reader

Paul Lilly — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:43:36 -0500

MSI has so far been pretty quiet about its plans to enter the increasingly crowded e-book market, instead letting others steal the spotlight. Maybe not for long, based on what we just found out. According to MSI chairman Joseph Hsu, the company is developing an e-reader built around Nvidia's Tegra platform.

Sounds promising just on that tidbit alone, but unfortunately, we won't see anything from MSI in time of the holidays. There are still some kinks to be worked out, so MSI has decided to hold off until the first half of 2010 to divulge any more details. Bummer.

The timing might not be terrible for MSI. It's true that rival Asus also plans to release an e-book reader in the near future, but first run batches will be limited and aimed at charities. Consumer models aren't expected to ship until the first quarter of 2010. Plus, tapping into Tegra could potentially turn out to be a huge advantage for MSI, particularly when pitted against grayscale e-book readers like the one Asus is working on.

MSI Debuts Three All-in-One PCs Ready for Windows 7

Pulkit Chandna — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 09:45:02 -0500

The all-in-one PC segment is now experiencing its share of Windows 7-induced buzz. MSI has announced three new entrants into its Wind Top family of all-in-one PCs, all of which are based on Nvidia’s Ion platform and support Windows 7.

The 21.5-inch Wind Top AE2220 is all set to hit the market in late October, with the launch of the 20-inch AE2020 and the 21.5-inch AE2220 Hi-Fi expected next month. According to a Digitimes report, the AE2220 features full HD output besides HDMI and VGA ports for hooking up game consoles and other devices.

The same report pegs its price at just a shade over $1000 (NT$35,000). HP, Gateway and Acer are other notable names that have already announced similar offerings which support Windows 7.

Image Credit: Monica Chen, Digitimes

MSI Wind U123

Nathan Edwards — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:30:42 -0500

Large and in charge

MSI’s latest venture into the netbook market offers slightly faster performance than the rest of the netbooks we’ve tested with much longer battery life to boot, but the nine-cell battery that makes that possible sends the MSI Wind U123 into the heavyweight range. It makes us wonder: How heavy can a netbook become before it stops really being a netbook? Do we buy them for their formfactor or their performance? Or is it just the price?

The battery is the first thing we noticed about our Wind review unit. The dang thing juts from the back of the netbook, raising the back end more than an inch from horizontal and adding more than a pound to the total weight—making the lap weight three pounds, four ounces. But it’s worth it if battery performance is king. In our full-screen DVD-video battery rundown test, the U123 far outlasted the competition, achieving just over seven hours of playback. The previous netbook record was shared by two Eee PCs, the 901 and 1000HE, both of which clocked in at five and a half hours. This means a nine-cell-powered Wind U123 will likely get eight to nine hours of light usage on a single charge.

Battery life wasn’t the only area in which the Wind U123 outperformed the competition, though. In both Photoshop and our newly instituted Quake III benchmark, it squeaked out small but perceptible leads on the competition—beating our previous Photoshop winner, the Asus Eee 1000HE, by five percent, and running Quake III 5fps faster than the Samsung NC10.

If you don't mind a bit of junk in the trunk, the Wind U123's nine-cell battery will fast win you over.

The Wind U123’s internals are exactly what we’d expect from this newer generation of netbooks: 1.66GHz Intel Atom N280 CPU, 1GB DDR2/667 RAM, 160GB 5,400rpm hard drive, Bluetooth 2.0, and 802.11b/g wireless card. Its external features are similarly standard: three USB 2.0 ports, a multicard slot, VGA, audio in/out, and 10/100 Ethernet. The LED backlight on the Wind U123’s screen is one of the brightest we’ve seen on a netbook; at 60 percent it was brighter than the 1000HE at 100 percent.

MSI has outfitted the U123’s lid with a color scheme it calls Midnight Blue—we call it Sparkly Blue Fingerprint Magnet. The rest of the netbook is matte black and much more smudge-resistant, except for the LCD bezel and the area above the function keys, which are glossy black, and the touchpad buttons, which have a brushed-metal look. The touchpad itself is responsive, if a bit small; you have to download drivers if you want to enable touchpad scrolling. The keyboard is a standard scissor-switch mechanism keyboard, as opposed to the chiclet keys we’re used to seeing on netbooks these days, but it’s quite comfortable to type on, and is nearly full-size. Indeed, our only gripe is the same one we have with every MSI keyboard: the damn Function key is where the Ctrl key should be, and vice versa. This has screwed us up more times than the 1040-EZ.

The Wind U123 boasts user-upgradeable memory and hard drive, though it involves removing 10 screws and punching through a warranty sticker, then removing the entire bottom of the chassis. At least you don’t have to take the whole computer apart, as with the original Acer Aspire One, but it’s not exactly as simple as removing two screws and popping off a panel, à la the Asus Eee 1000HE.

The Wind U123 brings a lot of muscle to the netbook arena: It’s slightly faster and has a much longer battery life than any we’ve previously tested, though the nine-cell battery adds bulk to the otherwise sleek netbook. And the bright screen is sure to win fans. But there are certainly netbooks out there that are lighter, easier to upgrade, and offer similar performance, even if they can’t quite match the battery life.

MSI P55 Mainboard Series Shines in the Spotlight, Features Performance Enhancing Design

Paul Lilly — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:19:28 -0500

More proof that Intel's P55 platform packs enough punch to satisfy power users and mainstream users alike, MSI's P55-GD80 motherboard helped Taiwan overclocker Coolater set a new Core i7 overclocking record. Using the aforementioned board, Coolater was able ramp up his 2.8GHz Core i7 860 CPU all the way to 5.39GHz.

"The MSI P55-GD80 owes much of its outstanding overclocking ability to its equipped MSI-exclusive technologies, such as the one second auto-overclocking feature OC Genie, the SuperPipe cooling system that effectively drops the operating temperature by 50C, and 1>4 phase total DrMOS power supply design," MSI said in a related statement.

According to the validated CPU-Z screenie, Coolater ran a 245.39MHz bus speed with a 3926.2MHz frontside bus and a 1.672 vCore. And of course at nearly 5.4GHz, LN2 was involved in keeping the proc cool.

MSI's P55-GD80 streets for $210 on 'Egg.

Image Credit: MSI