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Posts Tagged ‘Little Computer’

MSI Wind U120 001US 10 Inch Gray Netbook 6 Cell Battery

February 9th, 2010 Netbooks Reviews No comments

MSI Wind U120 001US 10 Inch Gray Netbook 6 Cell Battery




The Wind, an acronym for “Wi-Fi Network Device,” features a speedy and energy-efficient Intel Atom 1.6GHz Processor to provide longer operation hours and better mobile lifestyle. This notebook, or “netbook” is lightweight and ultra-portable, measuring about 7 inches wide by 10.23 inches long, and weighing just 2.6 pounds. Being small doesn’t mean ultra-small keyboard, the Wind features an ergonomically designed keyboard that is only 20% smaller than a full sized notebook keyboard, with keys spaced a comfortable 0.68 inches apart. The Wind comes equipped with a 10″ backlit LED screen that provides superior color quality and brightness giving you better comfort while reading reports, watching online videos and viewing photos. In addition, the 1024 x 600 screen resolution can fully display web pages, which makes it ideal for Internet browsing. With the 802.11b/g/n wireless built-in, you can enjoy the convenience of accessing the Internet anywhere and video chat with family and friends with the built-in 1.3 Megapixel Webcamera and microphone. With the Wind notebook weighting less than 3 pounds, makes it a great second computer to use at school, work and to take on vacations. 10 WSVGA (1024 x 600) LED Backlit Display Two internal Speakers Built-in 1.3 Megapixel Webcamera and Microphone Facial Recognition Software for Security Built-in 802.11b/g Wireless 10/100 Ethernet LAN 4-in-1 Card Reader – SD, MultiMedia Card, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro 3 x USB 2.0, Headphone out; Microphone-in, VGA, RJ-45 Approximate Unit Dimensions – 10.23 (L) x 7.08 (D) x 1.24 (H) Approximate Unit Weight – 2.3 Pounds

User Ratings and Reviews

4 Stars MSI U120 wind
Seems to be a very nice little computer. I use it mostly for email and web surfing and it is fine for that. Note that the 1G memory is not expandable. The keyboard is large enough that it doesn’t feel cramped. The speakers are terrible, so if you want to listen to music (or anything else) plan to use earphones. It is a little difficult to open the lid, and when fully open the computer tends to be top-heavy – it’s easy to tip backward – a minor inconvenience, IMO.

4 Stars Great Value
Very happy with the size, style, and performance of the Wind. For the price, I believe it is the best deal out there.

Positives- Great display, Good spacing on the keyboard, very lightweight, seems to have 5 hours of battery life, comes with sleeve case, has attractive design, very fast boot up, comes with XP not Vista, built in camera with face recognition software (pretty cool)

Negatives- mousepad could be better (click tabs not the best and pad not the most responsive, tends to fall backward if not sat on level surface with screen in back position, can’t upgrade ram but don’t think you really need it anyway

Overall a great computer, have gotten many complements on it. If you’re looking for a cheap netbook that doesn’t seem cheap, this is it. Have and would recommend to friends.

2 Stars Bad battery and hard to set up wireless connections.
Bought this item to replace our Dell 700 (as a travel computer) and was very disappointed. It took us a long time to connect to our wireless at our own house. Then we brought it with us along with the Dell 700 to Europe for a three week trip. (the Dell was brought with us a gift to someone else). The battery worked for 5 days after that it was dead and refused to take a charge. It was almost impossible to get the wireless to work, while our old Dell was up and running in no time. Maybe we just got a bad unit, but it’s going back to Amazon for a refund.

4 Stars Sorta Good, Sorta Bad
Fan is making some loud noises, I guess this is common. Only solution is to return or void warranty to fix.

3g is suppose to be built in, I can’t seem to get it working.

5 Stars The System that turns heads!
I am so proud of my new MSI Wind U120-024US (Black & Whie 2-toned color) model! I have see some complaints from others of a loud fan. Not on my unit. It sounds normal and when I use headphones for music and movies, the fan is unnoticeable. Some said it lacked a user-manual. Well, I’m all for saving trees and I hope a lot of us are. The walk-through on the 1st system boot up was easy & straigtforward. Then the User Manual had an icon right on the desktop. So those who had to visit the MSI website were just wasting time. However, I found the cam turn-on & set up confusing. But when I clicked the “help” button, the site it launched me to was helpful on the first try. The keyboard is comfortable, and everything works great as expected.

The faults I find on this system are common among most netbooks. Namely: the right and left mouse click buttons require a lot of pressure and don’t always respond right. That’s why I usually use a portable mouse. It ships with XP and 1 GB of memory (max) which is adequate for the uses it was made for.

I love this machine and recommend it to everyone shopping for a netbook!

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MSI Wind U123 001US 10 2 Inch Blue Netbook 6 Cell Battery

February 7th, 2010 Netbooks Reviews No comments

MSI Wind U123 001US 10 2 Inch Blue Netbook 6 Cell Battery




Intel Atom 1.6 GHz / 1GB RAM / 160GB Hard Drive / 1.3 Webcam / 802.11GN / 4-in-1 Card Reader / 6-Cell Battery / Windows XP Home / 2.6 lbs / Sleeve 10.2 WSVGA (1024 x 600) LED Backlit Display Two internal Speakers Built-in 1.3 Megapixel Webcamera and Microphone Built-in 802.11b/g Wireless 10/100 Ethernet LAN 4-in-1 Card Reader – SD, MultiMedia Card, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro Ports – 3 x USB 2.0, Headphone out; Microphone-in, VGA, RJ-45 Approximate Unit Dimensions – 10.23 (L) x 7.08 (D) x 1.24 (H) Approximate Unit Weight – 2.6 Pounds

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars MSI wind U123
If you want a net book with a 6-cell battery, this is for you! By the way, the batter does not really project out like other models, this one is compact, and well made. Run time is fantastic and it’s a great deal!

5 Stars MSI Wind U123 A Very Nice Little Computer
I wanted an easily portable, light computer and decided on a netbook. The next step was which one? After reading many reviews I decided to buy the MSI Wind U123 and I wasn’t disappointed. The keyboard was big enough to do word processing and the CPU was far more responsive than I had imagined. Even the battery life surprised me. The machine came with a six cell battery that has lasted me through about 4?hours of use. I use the machine mostly to browse the Internet and do word processing, but I also watch videos with it, and they are very smooth. The only exception is wireless streaming video, but that is because the wireless is a bottleneck.

This netbook has a card reader, USB connections, and other necessary connections. The screen takes a little getting used to because you don’t quite see an entire page, but you will get used to that. For the price of about $350 you are getting quite a competent computer that is about as powerful as laptops of a few years ago, but much easier to handle and with considerably more battery life. My machine came with Windows XP.

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4 Stars runs great with UBUNTU 9.04
This is a nice choice if you are traveling a lot. Battery life is long lasting and the performance under WINDOWS XP SP3 is good enough for web and office use. Entertainment (audio and video) during long flights and in waiting areas of airports is possible but due to the weak audio performance a little bit difficult, even with earphones. It is much faster with UBUNTU 9.04 but not stronger in audio output, so you can only solve the audio problems with an amplified headset. UBUNTU runs without problems and after a short time of learning I switched completely to this LINUX operating system, it comes with all the office and multimedia software you need for the netbook and it’s FOR FREE. The MSI Wind U123 is upgradeable in RAM and you can change the hard drive to a bigger one! MSI support told me, that the upgrade doesn’t void the warranty, only the use of wrong parts and the causes of that does it. So, if you want to upgrade the netbook with memory or disk space to get better performance, no problem! Please, if you buy this product, don’t think that it is a substitute for a high end PC! You will be happy with it, for sure, if you don’t like to carry a much heavier notebook with less battery life. The MSI Wind netbook is easy to handle and carry, so it is always there to use it.

3 Stars good but not great
I am traveling around the world with this netbook and overall i’d say it’s a good product but not great. Love the screen, size, weight, and speed of it, however the keyboard while ok has two faults i have issues with. 1 the period key is to small and scrunched so when typing almost everytime you need it you’ll hit another key. 2. while typing the cursor has a tendency to jump around to other sections of a paragraph and if you are not paying attention will delete something you have already typed. if i didn’t have these issues i’d rate it an A+

5 Stars MSI Wind
Received my netbook ahead of promised date. I’m a very satisfied Amazon customer and will continue using for purchases. Never had a problem. Merchants deliver quality products. As far as the Wind – great little machine. Added Ubuntu and I’ve been off to the races ever since.

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CaseCrown 8 9 Inch Mini Notebook Premium Memory Foam Pouch Case Black

December 15th, 2009 Netbooks Reviews No comments

CaseCrown 8 9 Inch Mini Notebook Premium Memory Foam Pouch Case Black




8.9″ Memory Foam Pouch is the perfect fit for Acer Aspire One 8.9″. This pouch is made out of premium quality shock absorbing memory form and it provides extra protection even though case is very light and slim. This pouch is water resistant and has internal supporting bands for Acer Aspire One 8.9″. Made In Korea.

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars Handy little bag
This thing is pretty useful- not only does it hold the little acer notebook securely with little elastic straps inside, it even has a little battery cushion and enough room so I can slide my jump drive (or jump drives) inside and not have to worry about them. And it even has a little extra wiggle room so I can slide my lab notebook inside and pack up my work a little quicker. It even has lock loops (if you have a problem with people breaking inside your case). If nothing else it keeps my notebook safe inside my backpack, even when I have a lot of crap inside. And when I’m home it’s impervious to cat hair.

4 Stars Great little computer
So far I am very happy with my Acer net book. I not only use it for web sutfing, but also watching movies and TV shows on netflix. In the bulding where I use the computer I get lousy AM radio reception, so the Acer is my wifi radio to boot!

I only have a few minor gripes about The Acer net book. The sound quality from the bult in spekers is pretty lousy, but I expected this. (there is not exatly room for subwoofers in such a tiny computer, and the sound from my 15 inch laptop is not that great, ether.) A good set of externel speakers or even cheap head phones are the order here.

The beutufull metallec finish (I got the saphire blue)gets all to quikly smuged with fingerprints.

Otherwise the Acer is a great computer, and I have recommended it to a number of people. It should be a hit with students, for its low price and extreme portability!

2 Stars Skip this one
I got this case to fit my acer aspire one. The case does fit the computer, but nothing else. No room for an a/c cord, mouse, or the like. Im selling mine and getting something better.

I guess I should have read the fine print.

4 Stars Great Bag
After getting an Acer the first thing I did was look for a bag for it. After looking around, this one looked like the best one.

It arrived very fast: Within about 2 days. It fit the acer in it perfectly and has straps so you can use the net book without ever taking it out of the case.

It doesn’t have pouches for the charging cord, making it not the ideal travel case, but it’s great for carrying your net book to classes if you just charge your acer at home.

1 Star What good is a case that wont hold the mouse or bat-charger?
When I ordered my Acer Aspire 8.9″ Mini-Notebook you also displayed what I believed to be a useful foam pouch to carry the computer. I guess it is if all you want to carry is the Mini-Notebook. Usually, when I travel I want to be able to recharge the battery as well. As far as I’m concerned this pouch is a waste of good money as it does not provide space for the mouse or battery charger. My vote is a big thumbs down!

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CaseCrown 8 9 Inch Mini Notebook Premium Memory Foam Pouch Case Black

October 24th, 2009 Netbooks Reviews No comments

CaseCrown 8 9 Inch Mini Notebook Premium Memory Foam Pouch Case Black




8.9″ Memory Foam Pouch is the perfect fit for Acer Aspire One 8.9″. This pouch is made out of premium quality shock absorbing memory form and it provides extra protection even though case is very light and slim. This pouch is water resistant and has internal supporting bands for Acer Aspire One 8.9″. Made In Korea.

User Ratings and Reviews

2 Stars Skip this one
I got this case to fit my acer aspire one. The case does fit the computer, but nothing else. No room for an a/c cord, mouse, or the like. Im selling mine and getting something better.

I guess I should have read the fine print.

5 Stars Handy little bag
This thing is pretty useful- not only does it hold the little acer notebook securely with little elastic straps inside, it even has a little battery cushion and enough room so I can slide my jump drive (or jump drives) inside and not have to worry about them. And it even has a little extra wiggle room so I can slide my lab notebook inside and pack up my work a little quicker. It even has lock loops (if you have a problem with people breaking inside your case). If nothing else it keeps my notebook safe inside my backpack, even when I have a lot of crap inside. And when I’m home it’s impervious to cat hair.

4 Stars Great little computer
So far I am very happy with my Acer net book. I not only use it for web sutfing, but also watching movies and TV shows on netflix. In the bulding where I use the computer I get lousy AM radio reception, so the Acer is my wifi radio to boot!

I only have a few minor gripes about The Acer net book. The sound quality from the bult in spekers is pretty lousy, but I expected this. (there is not exatly room for subwoofers in such a tiny computer, and the sound from my 15 inch laptop is not that great, ether.) A good set of externel speakers or even cheap head phones are the order here.

The beutufull metallec finish (I got the saphire blue)gets all to quikly smuged with fingerprints.

Otherwise the Acer is a great computer, and I have recommended it to a number of people. It should be a hit with students, for its low price and extreme portability!

4 Stars Great Bag
After getting an Acer the first thing I did was look for a bag for it. After looking around, this one looked like the best one.

It arrived very fast: Within about 2 days. It fit the acer in it perfectly and has straps so you can use the net book without ever taking it out of the case.

It doesn’t have pouches for the charging cord, making it not the ideal travel case, but it’s great for carrying your net book to classes if you just charge your acer at home.

1 Star What good is a case that wont hold the mouse or bat-charger?
When I ordered my Acer Aspire 8.9″ Mini-Notebook you also displayed what I believed to be a useful foam pouch to carry the computer. I guess it is if all you want to carry is the Mini-Notebook. Usually, when I travel I want to be able to recharge the battery as well. As far as I’m concerned this pouch is a waste of good money as it does not provide space for the mouse or battery charger. My vote is a big thumbs down!

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ASUS N10J A2 10 2 Inch Laptop 1 6 GHz Intel Atom N270 Processor 2 GB RAM 320 GB Hard Drive NVidia 9300M 256MB Vista Business XP Downgrade CD

October 20th, 2009 Netbooks Reviews No comments

ASUS N10J A2 10 2 Inch Laptop 1 6 GHz Intel Atom N270 Processor 2 GB RAM 320 GB Hard Drive NVidia 9300M 256MB Vista Business XP Downgrade CD




Intel Atom N270 1.6 GHz / 2GB RAM / 320GB Hard Drive / GeForce 9300M GS / Webcam / 802.11ABGN / Fingerprint Reader / Windows Vista Business 10.2 diagonal WSVGA (1024 x 600) Widescreen Display Integrated Webcam Nvidia GeForce 9300M GS with 256MB Dedicated Graphics Memory Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 (Switchable Graphics) 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless Card Reader Fingerprint Reader

User Ratings and Reviews

4 Stars Would be 5-Star without Vista.
This is a great little computer. Only thing making it bad is the problem getting VISTA off of it. It should only come with XP-Pro loaded, if they user wants to slow it down let them mess with puting the “option” of vista-business on.

3 Stars Pretty Nice, but would be better with a faster CPU
Well, I’ve had this thing for over a month now. It’s sturdy, sleek looking, and I am overall pretty pleased with my purchase. Some of the features that I really appreciate about this (when comparing it to other netbooks) are the following:

Bluetooth

HDMI output

nVidia GeForce 9300m graphics card

and the 6-cell battery that gives it some really great battery life.

2 gigs of ram as opposed to the 1 that many other netbooks have.

The downsides to this include:

The screen could have been bigger to fill the space.. I mean, as long as the space is there, we may as well have a larger screen.

I wouldn’t have minded a little more ram, even if 2 gigs is better than 1, I think 3 or 4 would have been even better. I mean, why not, RAM is cheap right?

The worst thing is the limitations that the Atom 1.6 ghz processor imposes on this system. Right now I give this thing 3 out of 5 stars, but if this thing had a fast enough processor to match the rest of it’s great features, I might have given it 5 out of 5.

But, again… it is a netbook. At the moment, I don’t know of any more powerful netbooks, tho I’m sure they will eventually come. So, I don’t have any regret for having bought it.

I have heard of people overclocking the cpu on this thing and as a result being able to run some newer games that you wouldn’t expect any netbook to be able to handle. So, if you want to risk it, that is an option.

4 Stars Just got it! Whooo Hoooo
Well, I have to give Amazon 5 stars for their service! I ordered it overnight shipping at 8:30 in the morning on Tuesday, and had it in my hot little hands by 9:30 am on Wednesday! Not too shabby – thanks Amazon!

As for the little notebook, I love it actually! It is everything you could want in an ultra portable. It really is attractive, (much nicer then in the pictures) and the keyboard feels great, I didn’t really even need to adjust. This is a nice, solid feeling notebook with an almost standard sized keyboard. Compared to the Acer 10.1″ there is no comparison! =)

Pros: Solid, nice looking, comfortable to work on, yet extremely portable. I love it! And with the geforce 9300 graphics, it runs Second Life very well (which is really the only game I play)

Cons: I wish it had come with XP loaded instead of Vista. I am not a Vista hater, and love it on my full sized (main computer) laptop but honestly, the atom doesn’t handle the vista very well. It is sloooooooow! I am definately going to use the disks that came with it to UPGRADE to XP! But it would have been nice if it had come with XP loaded with disks for Vista for those that really wanted it. That is really my only gripe for this sweet little baby! And the only reason I gave it 4 stars instead of 5.

I plan on loading the XP tonight, and I am hoping that that will change my rating to a 5!

UPDATE: Just loaded XP last night and this machine really hums now! I love it – and would give it 5 stars if I could change it! The install went well, just follow the instructions on the little pamphlet that comes with the machine. I had to go into device manager and manually update a few of the drivers but other then that, piece of cake! LOVE THIS LITTLE MACHINE!!!!!

5 Stars ASUS
Runs Great, Has to be the fastest netbook out very easy to overclock and has its own gpu, can be used for gaming

5 Stars External monitor and/or a bit of gaming
This “netbook” basically has all the features any real notebook would have except a dual core processor. You get a decent sized hard drive, plenty of RAM (more than the Atom processor can use), discrete graphics, Vista, great battery life, Bluetooth, and lots of ports. The specs are such that you actually can use this netbook as your primary computer. There is no optical drive, which allows the netbook to stay small and light.

The N10J is kind of a niche product. If you were a typical netbook user (internet, word processing, etc.), you would probably want a lighter, cheaper netbook. If you were interested in discrete graphics, you would probably want a dual core processor and more screen resolution. So, what’s the point of a souped-up netbook?

As I see it, the N10J is a highly portable netbook/notebook uniquely suited for two purposes:

1. Playing moderately demanding games

2. Using an external monitor

In my case, I was looking for something that could do both. The N10J is one of the few netbooks with HDMI. While the Dell Mini 10 and the Samsung NC10 have this feature also, the specs and features are way better on the N10J, making it much more functional as a primary computer. The N10J doesn’t have the most amazing graphics card, but it actually compares well to pretty much all the other sub-15″ notebooks out there, especially for the price. I doubt it will run the latest games, but I find that it runs older games very well, even on high settings. I don’t have any recent games, but apparently it can run newer, moderately demanding games just fine.

Since I chose the N10J to be my primary computer, my biggest concern was trying to get by with an Atom processor. Overall, I find that while the Atom processor can be pretty slow, it is worth giving up the processing power for the size and price. The limitations can be annoying – Vista startup is horrible (~2 mins, down from 4+ mins), installing programs takes forever, and ripping mp3s in CDex using the processor intensive VBR algorithms is unbelievably slow. However, even though Atom is pretty weak, most “real” programs don’t ever use a huge portion of the processing capacity unless you really try. I actually have no problems with the processor as long as I avoid running more than about three large programs simultaneously. I wouldn’t recommend lots of video editing or extensive batch processing in Photoshop, but typical use of large programs really shouldn’t be a problem. Since coming out of sleep or hibernation is actually pretty fast, I generally avoid the slow startup altogether. So far, the limitations of the Atom processor haven’t been severe enough for me to bother downgrading to Windows XP or overclocking the processor as many N10J owners do.

If you are planning on using the N10J as your primary computer, I suggest you know a bit about controlling background processes. Since the Atom processor is not dual core, the background processes really can kill performance, so you need to know how to keep them under control. (You don’t have a backup core when a background process starts hogging resources.) I definitely recommend disabling the pre-installed Google Desktop and Norton Internet Security. Also, I added an $8 4GB SD card for ReadyBoost which helps a bit.

With an external monitor this is an excellent setup. You get the best of both worlds – a tiny computer and a huge screen. The performance of the Atom processor is good enough, unless you regularly do a lot of fairly processor intensive tasks. It’s probably even better if you downgrade to Windows XP and overclock the processor.

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