14 DAY TRIAL // After its first attempt at making an impact on the ultra-thin mobile PC market ended with the Yukon platform being largely forgotten, Advanced Micro Devices has now devised the 'Congo' platform for laptops. To herald what some see as AMD's second attempt at grabbing a share of this market segment, MSI has introduced its new addition to the Wind series of laptops, the Wind 12 U230.
The 'Congo' is intended by AMD to provide a strong competition to Intel's Consumer Ultra-Low Voltage (CULV) processor series. As such, the processors employed by the new Wind are the Athlon Neo MV40 and the Athlon Neo X2 L335 dual-core chips. The laptop uses the AMD RS780MN chipset, which has an integrated ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics core capable of a 1366 x 768 HD Ready display.
Although it's supposedly a netbook, the laptop's resources are not to be frowned upon. The configuration includes up to 4GB of DDR2 memory operating at either 667MHz or 800MHz (depending on the model) and storage capabilities will be provided by hard drives, for a total storage space of up to 160GB or 320GB.
For connectivity, the laptop features Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11n Wi-Fi, VGA, HDMI and three USB 2.0 ports, as well as a four-in-one memory card reader and a 1.3Mp webcam. Some models will even be outfitted with Bluetooth and the mobile PCs will run on either three-cell or six-cell batteries. All Wind 12 U230 laptops are expected to run on battery for about four hours.
As an extra, the laptops are built with brand-new MSi Ergonomic De-Stress Keyboards. No word yet on when the product will come on sale, but it is unlikely that the Wind 12 U230 will be able to compete with the CULV-based Acer Aspire Timeline 1810TZ, which can run for eight hours at a time on battery power alone.
MSI's product based on AMD's 'Congo' platform for low-power mobile PCs will be equipped with Genuine Windows 7 Home premium and is expected to become available in January, with an estimated price tag of £399.