EDIT: 200 horizontal lines (600 vertical pixels vs 800 vertical pixels).

A little OT: I just got my ASUS 1000H last night ($450 at portableone.com with a 160 GB HDD). It’s a little smaller than I expected, but I’m getting used to the keyboard pretty quickly. The swap of the Ctrl/Fn keys (from my ASUS A8j) and the lack of dedicated PgUp/PgDn keys are a bigger issue than the right shift key. I’m missing the 200 vertical lines on the screen, but I’ve alleviated it a bit with an auto-hide taskbar and the F11 full-screen.

I was seriously considering the MSI Wind, but the price drop on the ASUS ($80 less than the 6-cell Wind), the HDD increase (80 GB), the slightly larger battery and the card reader convinced me to buy the ASUS. It was mostly the price, though (I’m pretty cheap).

Kevin, a legally blind guy has upgraded the RAM in an Acer Aspire One so how difficult do you think it really is? :-)

Kevin, if the Q1 is still somewhere in your house and it is, like mine was, fitted with an Atheros 5006 card, you can simply swap the card with the Wind one and get your OSX on WiFi in a snap. I suppose your Q1 is running windows (any flavour) so dirvers should not be an issue to keep the Q1 up and running.

P.S. My wind runs the Cell Stage of Spore. My little guy just can’t get to land without crashing. Maybe netbooks will evolve to play it someday.

Thanks, Bill! So… in your opinion the Acer is better for typing? I’ll have to check and see how easy it would be to slap a non-Windows OS on the Aspire One.

I don’t care much about heat (I use the machine for a few short 45-minute stints every day), and cheaper is of course very nice.

@Weylund,

The MSI Wind keyboard is better than the Asus EEE and rivals the Acer Aspire One. Actually, I liked the Acer keyboard better than the Wind’s (the period, comma and / keys are reduced in size). But that is an acceptable trade-off to me given the fact that the Wind runs a lot cooler than the Acer or the Asus.

Bill

MSI would have already had my money a long time ago if they hadnt “silently” replaced the Synaptics with Sentellic on the 6-cell. especially considering they have 1 of the most expensive netbooks on the market.

“It couldn’t be any easier to get at the guts of the MSI Wind.”

sure it could, a removable bottom panel just like most of the other netbooks out there.

Actually, it turns out that MSI is okay with RAM upgrades (a la EEE upgrade “scandal”) as long as you don’t mess with anything else. It’s okay though; you can keep wearing that leather jacket =D

Its dead simple to add RAM in the Wind. I even had an extra 2 gb dim laying around so i figured why not give it a try. It wouldnt boot as expected. It does run nice with 2 gb total thought.

Every day I come here, I feel more sold on the Wind. And every time I go to buy it, it’s totally sold out, or there’s been a price bump, or they’ve changed their trackpad.

Yeesh, MSI would have had my money a month ago if it weren’t for all their shenanigans.

Kevin — can you give a comparison regarding the keyboard? How does it compare to the other machines you’ve used after extended use? I like to write on my laptops and it’s pretty crucial that the keyboard be top notch.