Spotted Online: MSI Wind12 U230 Notebook With Neo X2 Platform and ATI Graphics

Bring on the Windows 7 netbooks– or, in this case, non-netbooks. The 12.1-inch MSI Wind12 U230, which popped up on MSI’s Web site, looks like a netbook, feels like a netbook, at 2.9 pounds, and has the same 160GB hard drive. But it promises more powerful performance. It runs Windows 7 Home Premium, as opposed to the pared-down Starter Editon, and packs AMD’s Athlon Neo X2 platform, which delivers a bigger performance punch than Atom (albeit, shorter battery battery life).

In addition to a processor that’s faster than a netbook’s (but weaker than a dual-core Intel ULV system’s), it promises impressive graphics performance for the screen size, thanks to an integrated ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics card. Indeed, the notebook has an HDMI port for outputting HD content (the screen itself has a resolution of 1366 x 768). We’re looking forward not just to benchmarking the system’s graphics card, but to see what kind of games it can handle, and how smoothly it plays 720p video clips.

Again, the tradeoff for this Neo-based system is likely to be battery life.

MSI promises just four hours, whereas other affordable ultraportables, such as the ASUS UL30A, last nearly ten hours. Finally, the U230 has what MSI calls an “ergonomic de-stress keyboard.” We’re conossieurs, of sorts, of keyboards (and touchpads) by now, so we’re curious as to what de-stress entails exactly.

No word yet on when the U230 will ship or how much it will cost. Stay tuned.