14 DAY TRIAL // Well-known mainboard manufacturer, Taiwanese company MSI lately seems to have left the true concept of mobility unexplored with the company’s products. At this year’s Computex, MSI is back in the true mobility game with the S20 Slider Convertible Ultrabook/Tablet.
Sure MSI was one of the top netbook players, but it is now clear that Intel’s Atom was a hoax and the netbook market is mostly dead.
The company is currently one of the best gaming notebook manufacturers and is the manufacturer of the world’s fastest gaming notebook, the GT70 that we reported about here and here.
When Intel presented the “Letexo” UltraBook concept, there was rumor that the tablet in Intel’s PR hands was an MSI-made device.
We can’t verify whether that first demo hardware really was made by MSI, but we can certainly say that the company’s S20 Slider is the first commercial implementation soon to be available.
The MSI Slider S20 Convertible Tablet/UltraBook is mostly an UltraBook rather than a tablet, as it has all the requirements of the UltraBook concept and only one tablet feature.
The system sports an Intel latest generation Core processor and stores the operating system and programs on a SSD just like the UltraBook moniker requires.
The device is light; it has just about 1,300 grams, which is around 2.86 pounds. It is less than 20-millimeter thick in its thickest edge.
The only tablet feature is the fact that the display can be tucked over the keyboard, so that the device looks like a tablet.
It does have a touchscreen, but that’s rather mandatory for the S20 Slider, as it doesn’t have a touchpad, so there has to be another pointing option.
Unfortunately, Intel’s UltraBook concept has this idiotic ignorance of the availability of an optical disk drive (ODD).
We would gladly give up two millimeters of that much praised thinness and carry 100 grams more just to have a nice slot-in optical unit.
There should be different price options with a DVD-Writer or a Blu-ray combo, or even a Blu-ray writing unit.
The S20 Slider has decent connectivity options, as it comes with two USB 3.0 ports and an RJ45 Gigabit Ethernet connector and HDMI.
These useful connectivity options are yet another point to show that the S20 Slider is basically a “smart” UltraBook.
The 11.6” display sports a mediocre, but rather satisfactory 1366 x 768 “HD Ready” resolution and also features a built-in accelerometer.
We would have liked to see a nice slot-in ODD and we can’t imagine why MSI didn’t also include an SD Card reader. Another puzzling question is: “Since when and how did anybody decide that a pair or a single USB port is “enough” connectivity on a laptop?”
We’re not getting the desired answer with MSI’s S20 Slider, but we want to congratulate the company on yet another well-designed product, as it is rather unique right now and no other product matches our standards any better.
There seems to be no webcam, but we think that the final version will, at least, feature a face camera for video calls.
The keyboard is very nice, but it seems that is has no backlighting.
There is no word on the official launch or the pricing yet.
