14 DAY TRIAL // Earlier this month, Andy Tung, MSI’s US Director of Sales, revealed, in an interview with the guys from LaptopMag, that the company was set to release a new version of its Wind netbook before the end of this year. The MSI Wind 2, or MSI Wind U120, has already surfaced on the Internet in pretty pixels, while technical details have also been made unofficially available, leaving us with only few questions to ask, including when the netbook will make its debut and which will be its starting price tag.
According to a recent post on Digitimes, the Taiwanese manufacturer is planning to unveil the new Wind netbook system sometime during next month. Moreover, MSI will apparently launch the new Wind U120 with a built-in 3.5G module, thus generating a few more market opportunities for the small-sized, low-power netbook system. With the addition of the new model, the company’s total netbook shipments could break 500.000 units this year alone.
As a quick reminder, the upcoming Wind from MSI will only deliver several differences in terms of design, compared with the company’s initial model. First of all, the Wind U120 is equipped with the same Atom N270 processor as the U100 model, and packs 1GB of RAM memory, 120GB of storage space, while being powered by a Windows XP operating system. Price-wise, you are looking at a netbook for which you will have to pay approximately US$552. It will be available in both black and white color versions.
Currently, MSI is said to be negotiating with local network carriers in Europe to bundle the 8.9-inch Wind U90 with 3.5G network services, a market plan that the company has already adopted in the Taiwan, where it teamed up with Vibo.
In other news, Digitimes reports that MSI has no ongoing plans of introducing a touchscreen Wind netbook to compete with a similar device announced by its competitor ASUSTek.