NetbookTech

LaptopMag interviewed MSI’s Director of U.S. Sales, Andy Tung, and received tons of juicy bits of information about upcoming MSI netbook models. Here are important tidbits from the interview:

• Wind U100 and U120 are parallel products featuring the same specs except the U120 will sport a new design and WiMax/3G options. The U120 will be available in the U.S. starting in January and will feature an Intel Atom N270 processor, 160GB HDD, 1GB of RA, and Wi-Fi. Price will be the same as the U100 although 3G/WiMax will cost more.
• Wind U110 and U115 will come out near the end of January and will have the Intel Atom Z530 processor. Both models will have long battery lives. The U115 will have both an SSD and a hard drive inside – AND you’ll be able to turn off the hard drive to conserve power. This results in the U115 hitting around 10 hours of battery life
• A new U300 model will be introduced at CES sporting a 13 inch display. This is not part of the Wind lineup though it “will be a very thin, light and affordable ultraportable.”
• MSI will also introduce a touch-enabled Wind at CES to compete against ASUS
• MSI says no to Linux for the U.S. market
• Best Buy sells around 10K units per month – not bad considering the Wind is only available at around 20 percent of the Best Buy stores
• Finally, upgrading the Wind’s RAM does not void the warranty on the netbook (good to know)

You can read the complete interview here at LaptopMag.

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If you’re a fan of the MSI Wind or just curious about what’s in store with MSI and netbooks, then you’ll want to read this LaptopMag interview with Andy Tung, MSI’s Director of U.S. Sales. Here are some tidbits from the interview:

• The MSI Wind U100 will be coming to a national retail chain in the coming week. The Windows XP model with the 3 cell battery will be priced at $399
• A business oriented Wind netbook will be coming out called the Wind U120 (also known as the Wind 2). Specs include a new look, 10 inch display, 1GB RAM, SSD or hard drive options, and 3.5 G support. You can expect this netbook in late Nov. or December with prices under $600.
• MSI has been selling around 150,000 to 250,000 Wind systems a month – that’s a lot of Winds! (This doesn’t include rebranded Wind systems either). Sales have been capped by the availability of the Atom processor

The interview did reveal an interesting statistic. According to Mr. Tung:

“the return of netbooks is higher than regular notebooks but the main cause of that is Linux. People would love to pay $299 or $399 but they don’t know what they get until they open the box. They start playing around with Linux and start realizing that it’s not what they are used to. They don’t want to spend time to learn it so they bring it back to the store. The return rate is at least four times higher for Linux netbooks than Windows XP netbooks.

This really shouldn’t be too surprising. Most consumers will jump at the notion of a cheap notebook so they’ll go out and buy a netbook without thinking about what OS is running on the box. Although Linux has gotten easier to use and maintain over the years, most consumers discover that they actually miss Windows and their familiar suite of applications – hence the higher return rates for Linux netbooks.  Of course, MSI could also consider bundling a different flavor of Linux like Ubuntu to see if this will improve return rates.

Finally, other notes from the interview:

• 6 cell battery production should be solved by the end of October
• 9 cell battery is real but it comes from a third party company and should provide 7+ hours of power
• Don’t expect mobile dual core Atom processors anytime soon. In fact, they probably won’t appear until the second half of 2009. My theory is – if you see any dual core Atom netbooks come out soon, they will be based on the desktop version (model 330)

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