Finally I received my white U100 6 cell MSI Wind. I wanted to have a office computer which is small, light and has long battery life. My G50V is too big and heavy to carry around. So, I ordered a Wind hoping that it would be perfect for my office work since I don’t need powerful system.

So, I opened the box and when I saw this baby, I was like WTF? This thing is freaking small! I never thought 10 inch would be THIS small. Now I wonder how small 7 inch eeepc would be. I doubt I can work on this small screen for 10 hours everyday. Screen is ridiculously small. I wish it had end-to-end 1280*800 screen.

Config is pretty standard like other Atom based netbooks: 10 inch ( WSVGA LED), 1GB RAM, 160GB HDD, Card reader, 1.6GHz atom, bgn wireless, bluetooth, 3 USB, VGA, 1.3 MP webcam, XP Home.

So, here are my impressions:

1. Screen: Now as gorgeous as my G50. Not even close. Again, I’ve not seen other netbooks; so I’ll assume netbook screens are like this due to small size.

2. Speed: OK for normal work such as word processing, browsing etc.  Processor can be overclocked 8%-24% dynamically without going to BIOS. Even at 8% 720p video runs choppy (about 20fps) but at 15% it runs smooth.

3.  Keyboard & touchpad: OK, my biggest complain is Fn key placement. Both my HP and ASUS has Ctrl key at the left most corner but this one has Fn key (like Dell, Lenovo). So, I always press Fn key when I want to press Ctrl key. Pretty frustrating. Also, touchpad is very small and there is just one button for left and right click and its very narrow. Since I use bluetooth mouse that’s not a big issue. Keyboard is good. But I’m making a lot of typo. Arrow keys and “,./” (3keys) are narrow compared to other keys. I need some time to get used to.. lol

4. I tried to upgrade RAM with a 2GB RAM but it won’t recognize 2GB stick. It has onboard soldered 1GB RAM. So, you can add one more 1GB RAM. Built in speakers are crap but sufficient. I pluggd a pair of PX-100 and it sound nice. Webcam is OK for video chat.

5. Other thoughts: One nice thing I noticed is that unlike other laptops, MSI has made two partitions: 40GB OS partition and about 110GB another partition. Saved my time from resizing OS partition. Wind comes without any crapware preinstalled like ASUS. There was a folder with some software such as Norton and Powerdvd but I deleted it. I’ve not run a battery test but I’m hoping it should be 5+ hours with a 6cell battery.

Overall, it’s an excellent netbook. If you plan to buy an affordable 6cell netbook then look no further. You can turn it into a MacBook Wind if you want to I liked the new HP netbook but 3 cell is deal breaker for me.

MSI Wind Picture

Wind U100	Keyboard size
15.4 inch vs 10inch	G50V vs Wind
Too small	Size comparison
Back	in my hand
T-mobile G1 vs Wind	G1 vs Wind

Finally I’ve set up a private Urban Terror server for all [DF] members so that we all DFs can play  together at some fixed place. The service is from Gameservers and the price is quite reasonable: 99 cents per slot. In case someone wondering, they do not have Urban Terror listed in their supported games list. You have to get Quake 3 server and Urban Terror is available in MOD section. Also Gameservers provides full FTP access and unlimited space for custom maps and mods. My server is a 10 slot private server. Since most of my team members are from India I was having tough time in finding Asian server but there are none. So I had to go for German server. If other DFs like this server then I’ll keep it else I have to drop the idea. I have a plan to start a Call of Duty 4 server too provided I earn enough through Adsense… :p

Here is our clan site and all started from here.

Ah after a long time. I’ve been so busy with job and stuffs. Now I’m bit free to do things I love to do.. GAMING!

Finally I got rid of my old Compaq laptop and bought a new ASUS G50V-X1 Gaming laptop from Newegg. It has been a long time since I played a good game. I’ve received my new laptop yesterday evening. Since then I’ve been trying out some of the highest rated games such as Crysis, COD4, Portal etc. So far I’m very impressed with this baby. It looks like a gaming laptop and performs like one. I wish ASUS had put a 9800GT in this system.

Config: Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 2.26G, 15.4″ WSXGA+, 4GB DDR2, 200GB HDD, NVIDIA GeForce 9700M GT 512MB DDR3 VRAM and other usual stuffs. It comes with 2 years international warranty and 1 year ASUS Accidental Damage Warranty.

I’m not going to do any review since there are plenty of them over notebookreview.com. But I did a little benchmark with 3DMark06 and Crysis (with Crysis benchmark tool) and the results are pretty much same with notebookreview benchmark.

Apart from the laptop which comes with 200GB 7200RPM HDD, I purchased another 250GB 7200 RPM HDD. Now I have a sweet 450GB HDD. I also got a Cyber Snipa Gamepad because I don’t want to torcher the keyboard like I did with my last laptop (had to replace the keyboard once :p). Along With the Laptop I also received a Logitech MX518 Gaming mouse, Alone in the dark DVD,  and a cool Backpack for FREE! Overall I’m pretty satisfied with my purchase.

I’m very busy now-a-days. Looks like this situation will continue for one more month. I’m hardly getting any time to update my blog.. Anyway, I was looking for some good themes for Foobar2000. After some googling, I did find some but none of them managed to give me expected result without crashing Foobar. Finally I found one at Deviantart which is pretty cool and easy to install. Here is how it looks:

The theme is called fooAvA by dawxxx666. Get it from here. You will get installation instructions over there and it’s pretty easy to install. The theme has plenty of features and settings to play with. If you are a Foobar user; I’m sure you will love it.

No it’s not some sort of benchmark. It is just a comparison between these three OSs in terms of memory, CPU utilization, booting and shutdown time from end users perspective. All three operating systems are freshly installed. Here are the details:

• System config (Laptop) : Intel Core solo 1.8 GHz, 1GB DDR2 RAM, Intel 945GM.
• Hackintosh: Leopard 10.5.2 iAtkos.
• Windows: XP Pro SP3 with all the drivers installed.
• Arch Linux: Kernel 2.6.25 Arch with Gnome 2.22.3

And here are the numbers:

Screenshots: at Flickr

Final thoughts

Memory uses of Arch is pretty impressive even with Compiz but the CPU uses is really odd. In idle mode it is using 10% and with compiz enabled, CPU uses jumped to 21%! This is not Arch specific. All the Linux distros I tried had similar CPU use pattern. Fresh installed XP is breezing fast but start up and shutdown time is pretty high. It can be attributed to the fact that it loads couple of extra services that came along with drivers such as bluetooth, synaptic touch pad, wireless, and Intel graphics. I should have disabled them before testing. Hackintosh’s performance can not be compared with an Apple Mac but still it turned out to be fastest in terms of start up and shutdown time. I can’t say anything about memory uses. Initially it was using 290MB RAM but as soon as I pressed screenshot shortcut buttons memory use jumped to 340MB. Only if I had a real Mac to test actual performance.

And btw, this post has been made from Arch.