Mini notebooks all over CompuTex- reviews appearing

The big CompuTex show in Taipei is underway and it seems that all the talk there is about mini notebooks as we expected.  They are popping out all over and reviews are also starting to appear.  Intel is out at CompuTex showing devices running the Atom processor and it seems (unfortunately) that Via is sadly missing with any devices running the newly announced Nano (Isaiah) chipset.

Msiwind_g00The MSI Wind is shaping up as the mini notebook to compete with and our friends at Laptop Magazine have been playing with one for a few days.  Joanna Stern of Laptop is in Taipei but before she left she published a very thorough review of the Wind and it is clear she finds it to be the mini notebook to beat at this point.  She should know as she’s now played with just about every little laptop out there so her rating of the Wind at 4.5 out of 5 stars is pretty significant.  Her review is the first that addresses how capable the Intel Atom processor is running a full notebook and she seemed to be impressed with the performance of the Wind overall.  The TurboDrive button that lets you overclock the processor on the fly may be the way for OEMs to go with these lower spec processors.  Note that the Wind she reviewed is running Windows XP so we’ll have to wait to see how an Atomic notebook might run Vista.  I don’t think it will run it very well but we’ll see.

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