Performance
Since the Wind features pretty standard specs, I won’t go into its specific performance in applications, suffice to say that it performs admirably. Windows XP Home fully boots into the pleasantly un-bloated installation in 42 seconds and from there opening and switching between applications is as quick as you’d need. The real star here is the battery life, however. With the Wi-Fi or 3G running, the Wind easily manages four hours of consistent office use (Internet browsing, file transfers, word processing, reboots, etc) with the screen at half brightness. It happily extends past that in power saving mode with the brightness turned down further and all connectivity functions disabled.
One issue worth mentioning is that the wireless network adaptor is incredibly slow while running on battery mode – almost unusable. A tweak is available to combat this that reduces battery life while giving you decent speeds on the wireless. The entire review process was run with the device in this tweaked mode and the battery life was still good.
Conclusion
Aside from a few ergonomics gripes, the MSI Wind U120H is a fantastic little device. It’s small, lightweight and powerful, and the inclusion of a 160GB HDD and 3G HSDPA means it’s got the specs to meet most demands. Great battery life, an excellent quality screen, and short startup time come together to round off this product perfectly. Just be wary of the price. At this point you could easily pick up a ‘proper’ laptop that would certainly be more powerful; it should be your need for portability and connectivity that will ultimately make or break this deal for you.
