MSI

Americans are patiently waiting until July 7 to get their hands on an MSI Wind. But not Germans. German consumer-electronics manufacter Medion is bringing its Akoya Mini E1210, a rebranded and recolored MSI Wind, to Deutschland for €399. Oh, and did we mention those Germans get it this week? The machine sporting almost identical specs to the Wind will be on sale at German ALDI this Wednesday, July 3.

The Akoya Mini has a 10-inch with a 1024 × 600-pixel resolution and looks like the MSI’s identical twin in the shots below. While it might lack the Bluetooth found in the Wind, it is bundled with Corel’s WordPerfect. I have reached out to Medion to see if the Akoya Mini will make a stateside appearance, but it looks like U.S. patriots will be waiting for the Wind over the Independence Day weekend. In the meantime, you can buy this MSI Wind e-mail address on eBay. Hey, it’s free shipping!

So you read our review of the stellar MSI Wind and you know it’s one of the best, if not the best, mini-notebook out there. Now all you are waiting for is a place to buy it. Unfortunately, it seems that first shipments of the Wind have been delayed until June 27.

On June 27, the MSI Wind will be available from a slew of online retailers, including Amazon.com, Newegg.com, MWave.com, Buy.com, and Zipzoom.com. However, Due to a battery shortage out of South Korea, the first batch of Winds will blow out with a 3-cell rather than a 6-cell battery for the reduced price of $479.99. Our review unit was bundled with a 6-cell battery and had an MSRP of $499.99.

No word yet on when the 6-cell version of the Wind will be available and whether it will still cost only $499. Will you wait for the larger battery?

There’s a lot to love about the MSI Wind NB: it has an 80GB hard drive, 10-inch screen, comfortable keyboard, appealing design, and an Intel Atom processor that puts every other mini-notebook’s CPU to shame. But at a time when low cost laptops from even lower-profile companies keep coming out of the woodwork, it’s tempting to trust the brand as much as the specs.

We know some folks out there are asking, “Who the hell is MSI, anyway?” For all of you considering the Wind, here’s a quick run-down on the company.

• It’s been around awhile.

Founded in 1986 in Taiwan, the company entered the U.S. market in 1998. In addition to the Wind, it sells full-size notebooks, mainboards, graphic cards, servers, workstations, multimedia products, networking devices, and technology for the health care industry.

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Gamers take note: MSI has updated its GX600 gaming rig to include more RAM and HDD capacities (3GB, and 320GB, respectively), but the most noteworthy addition is the 2.4-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 45-nanometer Penryn processor, which Daniel Wang, general manger of MSI Computer USA, claims makes the machine “even more powerful and resource-efficient.”

The aptly named GX600-Enhanced possesses some rather sweet specs (802.11n Wi-Fi, 3GB of RAM, 320GB hard drive, Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT graphics card w/ 512MB of video memory, Dolby audio, 15.4-inch non-glare display, and Turbo Drive Engine technology for overclocking the CPU by 20-percent), but will the new 2.4-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo provide fraggers with significant gameplay enhancements?

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