With variants of the Eee PC dominating the burgeoning netbook market, it seems as though every manufacturer is now rushing to squeeze out its variant on the theme. MSI's Wind U100 was announced early on. It was initially pegged as a competitor for Asus' original Eee PC, promising a brighter ten-inch screen, a bigger and nearly full-size keyboard, a higher capacity mechanical hard drive, and improved battery life. Those initial specifications proved prescient, foreshadowing the eventual direction the netbook market would take.

The Wind U100 sits as a sort of standard bearer for this new wave of netbooks. It's a remarkably balanced piece of engineering, delivering on nearly all of MSI's early promises. But rather than facing off against the original Eee PC, the Wind must now contend with a fresh batch of rivals, including HP's Mini-Note, Acer's Aspire one, and new Eee PC 900 and 1000 series models from Asus. Keep reading to see whether has crafted a worthy competitor in the U100, and whether the system is a compelling netbook in its own right.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/15291