14 DAY TRIAL // Micr-Star International has just released the upgraded GE70 and GE60 laptops, but those are just part of the product line is has brought forth on this auspicious day.
A third mobile personal computer that received a new set of hardware is the CR61, first discovered back in July, 2012.
Measuring 15.6 inches in screen diagonal, it uses a normal, glossy LED-backlit liquid crystal display of 1366 x 768 pixels (HD, High-Definition).
Some may frown at the lack of Full HD support (1920 x 1080 pixels), which is understandable knowing how fast things on the display market seem to be progressing.
Still, HD is quite enough for a multimedia notebook, and will ultimately allow a lower price, which is the whole point really, unlike with the GE series.
On that note, the CR61 lacks discrete graphics as well, as the third-generation Intel Ivy Bridge CPU has its own.
The rest of the hardware can be customized according to budget. Storage space, courtesy of a hard disk drive (HDD), is in the 250 GB, 640 GB or 720 GB levels, while the random access memory (RAM) can go as high as 32 GB (dual-channel DDR3-1600 MHz).
Everything else is what the populace has come to expect from multimedia notebooks: a DVD super multi drive, Bluetooth (4.0, 100-meter range), 5-in-1 card reader, 4W stereo speakers, a 1.3-megapixel camera, stereo HD audio, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n WLAN and, naturally, video and I/O ports (HDMI, D-Sub, USB 3.0).
Unfortunately, we have no information to share regarding the price, so interested consumers will have to go hunting online or through the shelves of street vendors. MSI only said that this would vary according to region and, naturally, the selected hardware components. The frame will be colored black or black and red. Buyers will need to procure Windows 8 on their own if they wish to upgrade.