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.
The MSI Wind U135 is available for purchase starting today on a variety of retail Web sites.