MSI ships first Wind mini notebooks to US

MSI this afternoon confirmed that it has finally begun shipping the Wind, its first mini notebook. Stores such as Amazon, Buy.com, Fry's, and Newegg are all receiving the 10-inch portables first and will initially receive basic versions with a three-cell battery and Windows XP Home. Versions with the longer-lived six-cell battery as well as those preloaded with Linux are due in September, the company says. The larger battery itself will be available separately at the same time.

The news follows multiple delays stemming from battery shortages but preserves the Wind as one of the greatest single challenges to the Eee PC 901, which shares the same 1.6GHz Atom processor and 1GB of memory but has been priced higher despite its smaller 8.9-inch display and use of flash instead of a the Wind's hard drive.

ASUS is known to be cutting Eee PC prices and introducing the large-framed, small screen Eee PC 904 as a reaction to the Wind and other offerings from Acer, GigaByte, and other manufacturers.

Filed under: computers
Other story tags: Intel, Linux, ASUS, Eee PC, Atom, Acer, MSI, Gigabyte, Wind