MSI Wind U135 Netbook add Pine Trail

Acer has a prime competitor in the ultra-affordable Netbook market, and that's MSI. The just-announced MSI Wind U135 doesn't add much that's new to the Netbook equation, swapping out the previous Atom N270 processor for a next-generation battery life-extending N450, nicknamed Pine Trail. Starting at $309.99, the Wind U135 comes with a 160GB or 250GB hard drive, plus 1GB of RAM.

The very Netbook-looking Netbook comes in charcoal, silver, ruby, or sapphire, aka black, silver, red, or blue, with a film-printed shiny coating. New to the Wind U135 is a raised chiclet keyboard, so that the Netbook joins the ranks of nearly every other laptop nowadays. A new, larger touch pad has also been added. Five different power management settings are built in--not that we have ever had to concern ourselves with power efficiency on a Netbook.

A 10-inch screen with a standard 1,024x600-pixel resolution, three USB ports, a 1.3 megapixel Webcam, and 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi round out the features. And, of course, for a price this low, the Wind U135 runs Windows 7 Starter.

written by Scott Stein, a New York Jets fan and CNET senior associate editor

Acer Aspire One 532h performance review

Acer Aspire One 532h Performance

Powered by the new 1.66-GHz Intel Atom N450 processor and 1GB of RAM, the 532h scored 1,332 on PCMark05, which is 145 points below the netbook category average, and about 50 points below the Toshiba mini NB305. On Geekbench, the 532h saw a score of 896, which is close to 60 points above average, but nearly 30 points below the NB305. Still, the 532h performed well for a netbook; windows opened quickly, and we had no problem browsing the Web, watching videos, or listening to music.

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Using HandBrake, the 532h was able to transcode a 114MB MPEG-4 video in 29 minutes and 18 seconds, about 15 seconds faster than average. When we performed the same test using Oxelon Media Converter, which handles multiple threads, the task took just 5:50, about 10 seconds faster than the NB305.

The 5,400-rpm, 250GB hard drive booted into Windows 7 Starter Edition in a quick 51 seconds, and duplicated a 4.97GB folder of multimedia at a rate of 22.4 MBps, 6.6 MBps faster than the netbook average. That places it between the NB305 (20.6 MBps) and the Eee PC 1005PE-P (26.4 MBps).

The performance of the 532h’s Intel GMA 3150 graphics chip was about the same as other netbooks of its ilk; on 3DMark06, its score of 153 was nearly identical to that of the NB305 and the 1005PE. Hulu videos, such as The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien and an episode ofHeroes streamed fairly smoothly, but not at full screen.

Compare 3DMark06 results with similar laptops