Good question. I'm interested in the MSI Wind. So is my wife, after she caught a glimpse of the pink one.

I was thinking about getting one of these for my son to play things like nickjr.com and pbskids.org, but I'm just going to get a new 15" asus laptop for me and let him have my inspiron 9400 instead. I have had a new computer in 3 years and haven't *bought* a new one in 5+ years, so it's an easy justification.

I didn't check to see if the 7" screen on the EeePC would be big enough to actually play those flash games, and I don't know if I'd have been able to install things like his JumpStart games, but it's moot now. I think these things would be great for kid computers that you can always have handy, but I think all the JS games require the CD in the drive at playtime, so that's probably a big issue.

I can't really see the market that the eeePC is going for. If you really want an ultra-mobile PC, pickup the Nokia N810. I have an N810 and use it as my laptop replacement. I can check websites, watch videos on youtube, jot down notes, IM friends, and download things via Bittorrent and soulseek. If you're feeling adventurous you can even install KDE onto it and get a full desktop experience, including running Open Office, etc. Connect a portable bluetooth or USB keyboard and type away. The screen has a surprisingly good viewing angle (better than every laptop i've seen) and speakers also rivaling anything i've seen on a laptop, making it a great little device to show videos to friends with. I picked mine up in late February and it stays in my back pocket with me all day, battery life lasts me just about all day (at least 12ish hours) so I never have to worry about plugging it in until I get home after work, or whatever i'm doing.

The reason I am/was considering the EeePC was that they came out with WinXP versions. Which - if I could get my son's games working on it - would make it a perfect child-sized laptop, IMO. I guess I'd need to dig around and find out what resolution those games run at to be sure they'd even be playable on the assumption that I could get them to ignore lack of CD in the drive. Anyone play flash-games on one of these? Like pbskids or nickjr? Is the screen even tall enough?

Not that it really matters - I ordered a new Asus laptop yesterday, so he'll get to have my Dell as a hand-me-down.

Doh.
Duh.

As soon as they went to three full digits on those displays, I always changed my readouts to be '666'. If people asked, I told them it was beastly fast.

I am also looking at the MSI wind. I've been following these things for a while now and almost got caught up in the "eee" frenzy around christmas. Luckily I talked myself out of it and am now happily looking forward to the MSI Wind.

My only problem is that they're putting the two different OS systems on different hardware. Why must this continue to be the issue. I'm going to put ubuntu on it anyways... Why make me have to buy the more expensive Windows version just to get the better hardware.

Oh, and of note.

I read somewhere in an interview that upgrading the ram would void your warranty. So might as well go with the better one. Not to mention that glorious 6-cell 5 hour battery.

The other problem I'm running into is that I'm starting to see lots of standard laptops selling on newegg for around $500. This is seriously starting to make me wonder if I'm going to be getting what I'm looking for out of the Wind. I find the form factor to be the selling point to me, but if I can get significantly better performance out of a slightly larger, same price machine I don't really know how to make that judgment call.

I nearly bought an EeePC last week, not knowing a huge amount about them other than the spec. I messed around with the demo model in the store for a while, and it was far too slow, far too low res and felt even cheaper than it should have. At £220 in the UK, it is too much for too little.

I use my HTC TyTn2 for a bit of easy web browsing, but I was hoping that an EeePC would obviate my need for a new laptop. I really only use the current one for browsing, but it is getting a bit too long in the tooth. Ho hum.

It depends on your definition of performance. If all you care about is computing performance, you'll probably get more out of a $500 Acer than an MSI Wind.

If you're counting portability as much as computing power in the "performance" definition for a laptop, things change. Looking at those NewEgg laptops in the $400-500 range, the weights I'm seeing are 5.9lbs, 6.2lbs, 6.4lbs, 5.6lbs... for me, the Wind's 2.6lb frame "outperforms" those by a lot. I don't consider 6 pounds to be "slightly larger" than 2-and-a-half. The latter is a carry-around-everywhere machine for me, the former stays at home or just gets set on a hotel room desk and stays there.

The MSI uses a 1.6 GHz Atom chip, which overclocks to 1.9 GHz if you use the "turbo" button (or whatever they actually call it), and it's got a 10" 1024x600 screen.

I hope one of those people that's watching my Dell laptop auction on eBay actually buys it. I want to put down my Wind order. Whoosh!

The MSI Wind has been delayed a little.

June 29th will see the Windows version, with only a 3-cell battery, shipping for $479.

The 6-cell battery version (and the 3-cell, 512MB RAM Linux-bundled version) are to ship in early July.

Presumably, the prices for the 6-cell XP model and 3-cell Linux model are still $499 and $399.

I really see no reason why anyone would buy any model other than the $499 XP one. The included RAM is onboard, so while there is an upgrade slot, I'd prefer 1GB of RAM onboard + 1GB more that I add, instead of only upgrading to 1.5GB total. And who wants a 3-cell battery? 2.6lbs vs. 2.3lbs hardly seems like a serious enough factor to slice battery life in half. After all, a 2.3lb laptop with 0 juice is just a big paperweight.

I just wish they'd offer the Linux machine with 1GB of RAM and the 6-cell battery, at slightly less than $499. Then I'd get that - though I'd end up wiping SuSE and installing Ubuntu, no different than if it was XP instead )

Be wary of the Asus Eee PC - unless you have small fingers. That keyboard is BARELY big enough for someone with small fingers. A woman at work just got one and brought it in. I tried to type a sentence on the keyboard and boy was I ever stumbling over my own fingers. The screen is also a lot smaller than I was expecting. If you can find one in a Best Buy somewhere, or similar store where they might sell it, check it out before deciding on the purchase. Any other laptop that offers similar dimensions is likely to have similar components.

They won't do that, because then it would be completely obvious how much Microsoft is charging for Windows. Dell did something similar with their Linux desktops - they hide the price of the OS on the Windows side with more expensive hardware extras on the Linux side, instead of showing the difference between two identical machines with different OSes. It's particularly sensitive on these machines because their price is so low - the Windows tax can be north of 20% of the total cost in some cases.

So the Wind is shipping. Anyone have reports?

And then there's Acer's Aspire One, where the Fn and Ctrl keys are in the right place...