CES 2009: MSI U120/U115 Netbooks with 3.5G or WiMAX

The Netbook Wave

Netbooks seem to be suddenly surging the market following ASUS’ Eee PC. MSI and others are following suit and MSI is showcasing their latest and greatest netbook offering: the U120. The U120 is the new big brother of the Wind Netbook U100 which has been a hot item in Europe, the US, and Japan.

MSI believes the new U120 is the epitome of professionalism with its light, slim and thin characteristics and compact 10″ widescreen LCD with a tiny resolution of 1024×600. The U120 will fit in an A4 sized bag and can come in a Pearl White or Cool Black color. The actual dimensions are 10.24″(L) x 7.09″(D) x 0.78″~1.30″(H) and weighs in at only 2.23 pounds.

We have all heard the horror stories of company traveler’s having a laptop stolen or misplaced. MSI is taking some voluntary precautions with this professional-level netbook by pre-loading MSI EasyFace, a Face Recognition System, that will use the built in 1.3MP webcam to make the U120 more secure than most right out of the box.

Running Windows XP Home, the U120 is based on the Intel Atom platform featuring the N270 1.6GHz Atom processor and 1GB of RAM for increased battery life and can support a hard drive of up to 160GB. Since quick internet access is essential for today’s business traveler, MSI added support for the latest Wi-Fi standards: 802.11b/g/n! For 3.5G wireless transmission, consumers will need to purchase the U120H model that will ship with the optional 3.5G wireless card. There has been no announcement on pricing for either the U120 or U120H models.

MSI also talked about their new U115 Hybrid Netbook that features both a SSD and traditional HDD. The OS is installed on the SSD for faster boot times and operational efficiency and the SATA HDD is used for storage. The netbook will also feature an ECO power-saving mode that will shut off the SATA HDD to allow for up to 12 hours of battery life using only the low-power SSD thanks to a 6-cell battery!

Hope you are looking forward to more coverage for this year’s 2009 International CES in Las Vegas! Stay tuned!