14 DAY TRIAL // Some people might not be very pleased when reading this but, then again, MSI probably feels the same. It appears that the company's highly mediated sub-notebook is going to be delayed once more. That is, after it has already been pushed back once until July.
This doesn't come as great news for Micro Star International, that will be competing with ASUS and Acer in the netbook market. Nevertheless, as unfortunate as the delay might be, users will just have to wait until August to get their hands on the MSI Wind PCs, unless the Taiwanese manufacturer decides to push back the nebook for a later date once more. With all this, the good news is that the 3-cell equipped Wind PC is available and that the delay affects only those netbooks that feature a 6-cell battery.
The reason for MSI's problems seems to be the shortage of batteries caused by the March fire at the LG Plant. According to recent accounts, the manufacturer hasn't succeeded in somehow wiggling out of this problem and, therefore, had to delay the sub-notebooks for an additional month.
Users can only hope that MSI manages to keep its word on the August availability date. If not, they will probably be forced to search for any three-cell version of the Wind, which all go $20 cheaper than the six-cell version.
MSI's 10-inch Wind PC is equipped with an Intel Atom processor running at 1.6GHz. The netbook features a maximum storage capacity of 80GB on a SATA I hard disk. With 1GB of DDR2 memory, this small-sized notebook is capable of running a Windows XP Home Edition operating system. With the 6-cell battery, the netbook weighs in at 2.6lbs.
MSI also has to deal with the fact that its main competitor, ASUS, has released the Eee PC 904 model which, unlike all other netbooks, is equipped with an Intel Celeron M CPU. This means that the new Eee PC will not have to deal with the issue of the shortage of Atom processors which, in turn, translates into a shorter delivery period from which users can benefit.