We just acquired our first netbook. We’ve been thinking about getting one of these for our mobile computing needs, but we held off, and we’re happy we did. The first netbook, the Asus Eee had a 7″ screen, a small solid state drive, a Celeron processor, and limited RAM, caught our interest for its small size.

Now, most netbooks have 10″ screens, solid state drives have been tabled till they become more stable and reliable, replaced with more conventional hard drives. Most of them use the Intel Atom N270 CPU. They are optimized for low power consumption. Ironically, while the Atom chipset is optimized for low power, the Intel chipset it is paired with is not so much, and the CPU accounts for only 20% of the total power consuption of most netbooks. Being as most use the same chipset and motherboard, there is little variation on that front between not only the various Eee models, but the MSI Wind, the Acer Aspire, and the HP Mini.

Whereas initially, netbooks ran a stripped down Linux distribution, which many replaced with other distributions, or Windows. Now, most ship with Windows XP, although Microsoft has a version of Windows 7 which will be for netbook use.  Windows 7 may has some major limitations though, especially in the Starter version likely to end up on netbooks, but it is a major improvement over Windows Vista. We’ll stick with Linux though.

After all that, we’ve bought a MSI Wind to enjoy. The Wind was available to us in a U100 or U120 configuration. We got the U100 for only $299. Unlike the U120, it offers an extra slot for an additional GB of RAM. The 120 is more streamlined, and offered additional battery life. We opted to buy an extra battery separately. We have thoughts of upgrading it with additional RAM and possibly a new wireless card.

The Wind will serve us well on the go, small enough to be carried around anywhere we go, without the bulkiness of a regular laptop. We may even write some entries on it. More to come on this.

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