Wireless and Battery Life
Connecting to a WEP or WAP security-protected network is not as simple as entering the network password. The U90X won’t detect routers automatically; you need to configure the settings for a particular connection in the network manager and need to select the right type of encryption. This worked on some networks, but on others we weren’t able to connect. And as we said above, even when we were able to sucessfully connect to an access point, it was tenuous at best; the U90X frequently disconnected from a hotspot for no apparent reason.
The signal strength when we were connected was decent and remained above 75 percent when the system was 50 feet away from our access point. Web pages loaded quickly; NYTimes.com loaded in 7 seconds, and we had no problem streaming video from Hulu.com. An episode of Family Guy had minimal pauses and audio skips.
We expected more out of the Wind’s three-cell battery, especially since the 10-inch version with a six-cell battery lasted more than five hours on a charge. The U90X, however, ran out of steam in 1 hour and 39 minutes on the LAPTOP Battery Test (continuous Web surfing over Wi-Fi), almost 50 minutes less than the category average, and far less than the 5:30 of the U100.
Warranty
MSI backs this mini-notebook with a one-year warranty but offers tech support only from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. (PST) Monday through Thursday, and 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. (PST) Friday. Unfortunately the call isn’t toll-free. It is also worth noting that, according to MSI, while the U90X can support up to 1GB of RAM, performing this upgrade will void the warranty; a conspicuous “warranty void if tampered” sticker resides on the system’s underside.
Verdict
The MSI Wind U90X’ keyboard is the largest and most comfortable of any 8.9-inch mini-notebook on the market, and we like its spacious hard drive. But the SUSE Linux operating system was a mistake, and for that we cannot recommend the U90X over the Acer Aspire one or the Dell Inspiron Mini 9. While its $369 price is appealing, only those willing to replace the SUSE OS with a version of Windows or another flavor of Linux will find the Wind U90X a decent 8.9-inch netbook.
