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Relative perfomance of msi wind vs macbook

Hi,

I just want to comment on the performance of the superior netbook msi wind u100.

I sold my much beloved macbook 2.0 C2Duo with 2.5 GB ram and 250 GB Harddrive last week. The reason was the rumored update of the macbook series. I just couldn't stand there in, say two weeks, with a laptop that is heavier, really old design, and slower than a new version. Therefore, my masterplan was to buy an msi wind during these weeks of waiting for the new model and then when the new macbook was introduced, just resell the wind.

After accidentally reformat the harddrive and thereby wiping out the xp install i decided to try a hackintosh since I've heard that it could run leopard pretty god.

I was blown to bits! My little cutie massacred the macbook in booting performance, finder performance, surfing, better keybord, led screen, built in bluetooth etc. In heavier graphics application, the macbook with its faster processor is of course much better, but except from that, my macbook "nano" pwns! It even copes with virtualizing xp in vmware for office 2007, although that specific perfomance is somewhat worse compared with the macbook due to the single core of the Atom processor!

So here I stand after a week and don't give a s**t about if apple releases a new model or not. I will never give up my new love.


And I got to keep 300 bucks from the money I got from my old macbook.

Just sell your old "portable" pieces of plastic junk and step into the 21 century and buy an MSI WIND.


End of commercial statement...
 
ppdix said:
Now the choice is more limited and Apple is again becoming expensive. PC's rule because they are cheap, not because they are better. IF u know a guy that puts a PC together from cheap parts u can have something faster than a Mac Pro for 1/3 the price.
Click to expand...

Surely you jest! Yes you can build a fast PC, but faster than a Mac Pro for 1/3 the price? What are you smoking?
 
I have an Acer Aspire One in my Amazon que. I want the solid state Linux one and I'll wait for the Ubuntu community to get it right to replace the Red Hat derivative. I'm even toying around with shelling out the big bucks to get the 6 cell - bumping battery life to close to 6 hours.

I carry a touch - the touch and heavy typing don't go together. I'll eat crow here, but Apple's not entering this market. Hey, it's not like I'm running Windows or something, more like kissing cousins in the Unix world.
 
I would totally buy a 9" MBA form factor, atom powered, with bult-in 3G modem, some kind of Mac OS X Lite, U$499 for 8GB and U$599 for 16 GB, maybe cheaper :D
 
bearcatrp said:
With intel releasing a dual core atom, apple could smoke the competition with a small sub notebook with a 8 or 10 inch screen. Would buy it in a heart beat.
Click to expand...

Geek Bench Atom 1.6 GHZ single core running Leopard = 952
Geek Bench Atom 1.6 GHZ dual core running Leopard = 1235
Geek Bench Mac Mini 1.5 GHZ Intel core solo 1428
Geek Bench Mac Mini 2.0 GHZ Intel core2Duo = 2592
 
retroneo said:
Leopard is Sooooo slow on an Atom (check out the plenty of videos showing it)

I can't imagine Apple releasing it.
Click to expand...

I built a Hackintosh with the Intel Atom running Leopard, and I find it much faster than I expected. It can even run HD streaming TV programs at full screen without stuttering.

It runs MS Office 2008 to my satisfaction, Photoshop CS under Rosetta quite fast, Aperture runs fine as does iWork.

Overall, I am surprised, but pleased with this machine. Nevertheless, I doubt that Apple would use this processor since it is slower than the Intel Core Solo processor.
 
You know, i took (lugged?) my first Mac to college - the SE.

I've never had the "want" to buy something non-Apple and hack it to run OSX.

This has tipped the scale (i'm not sure my DH will thank you guys!).

This is what i need. Period. Something cheap enough to hand to a 9yo with special needs to do her school work on.....

Something i won't stress if the 12yo actually wants to gasp, take it somewhere.

It's perfect. Sounds like the perfect birthday gift for a new 13yo too.

Apple has till Mid-january to answer this - or this is the direction i'm going to go....

Carniphage said:
The MSI wind has a 10" screen.
An almost full-sized keyboard.
You can plug in the Apple 802.11n board for 270Mbit WiFi
Can have 2GB Ram 80GB hard drive (or use an SSD)

And as has been said, it runs OS X beautifully.

Here's what it looks like in a shop.
mm3570au8.jpg


On the downside, the trackpad is pretty poor. And the 3 cell battery only lasts 2hours.
I am sure Apple could make it sweeter still.


C.
Click to expand...
 
Carniphage said:
The MSI wind has a 10" screen.
An almost full-sized keyboard.
You can plug in the Apple 802.11n board for 270Mbit WiFi
Can have 2GB Ram 80GB hard drive (or use an SSD)

And as has been said, it runs OS X beautifully.

Here's what it looks like in a shop.
mm3570au8.jpg


On the downside, the trackpad is pretty poor. And the 3 cell battery only lasts 2hours.
I am sure Apple could make it sweeter still.


C.
Click to expand...

That's pretty bold of the shop to actually call it an Apple Macbook Nano. Are they selling it with Leopard already installed? I'll go out on a limb and guess it is in a country outside of Apple legal's reach.
 
Carniphage said:
The MSI wind has a 10" screen.
An almost full-sized keyboard.
You can plug in the Apple 802.11n board for 270Mbit WiFi
Can have 2GB Ram 80GB hard drive (or use an SSD)

And as has been said, it runs OS X beautifully.

Here's what it looks like in a shop.
mm3570au8.jpg


On the downside, the trackpad is pretty poor. And the 3 cell battery only lasts 2hours.
I am sure Apple could make it sweeter still.

C.
Click to expand...


is it me or does it say 'apple macbook nano' on the tag?

[EDIT] you're 3 minutes ahead jzuena!
 
yes cheaper is better, to many people stay on windows just because of price.
If macbook's got lowered down to $899 and still got a $100 education discount I think we would see a large gain in market share.

(I don't want to have a 512mb of ram macbook though I'm talking about lower your stupid 34% gross per product and run it at about 25% seriously when you can get almost double the hardware for $100 less something needs to change)
 
been there done that

maccompaq said:
Surely you jest! Yes you can build a fast PC, but faster than a Mac Pro for 1/3 the price? What are you smoking?
Click to expand...

Easily possible in a tower PC (been there done that) but not quite in a notebook. I have seen $1200 and almost $1100 notebooks that can kill macbooks pro in speed and price. But they are huge and tacky looking and come with Vista:mad:. But you look at todays market yeah people don't mind it that much if they save $700.
 
lgoodlove said:
Easily possible in a tower PC (been there done that) but not quite in a notebook. I have seen $1200 and almost $1100 notebooks that can kill macbooks pro in speed and price. But they are huge and tacky looking and come with Vista:mad:. But you look at todays market yeah people don't mind it that much if they save $700.
Click to expand...
There are many of my Hackintosh buddies that have built a quad core Hackintosh that is very fast, but still not faster than the Mac Pro. They use the Q6600 at 2.4 GHz and overclock it to 3.0 GHz. Thus it is technically faster than the Quad Mac Pro of 2.8 GHz, but in the real world, it will not match the Mac Pro for doing real work. Bench marks might be close, but bench marks do not make work.

For my use, a quad core would be a waste of resources to surf the web, use MS Office, Photoshop CS, Aperture and iWork since it will not out perform a Core2Duo.

So, continue claiming that a 3 GHz homebuilt computer will outperform a Mac Pro, if that makes you happy.
 
Mazda 3s said:
Uhh, why would Windows XP be no fun on these machines? Windows XP came out in 2001 and is relatively lightweight compared to most "modern" operating systems. It runs just fine on my MSI Wind.
Click to expand...

Good to hear. :)

I have two HP 2510ps with the 1.33GHz ULV Core 2 Duo CPU and 4GB of RAM. I can literally brew a pot of coffee waiting for Vista to boot and even XP is not all that snappy, though it is far better.

Anyway, for real work I have my MBP. :)
 
CWallace said:
Good to hear. :)

I have two HP 2510ps with the 1.33GHz ULV Core 2 Duo CPU and 4GB of RAM. I can literally brew a pot of coffee waiting for Vista to boot and even XP is not all that snappy, though it is far better.

Anyway, for real work I have my MBP. :)
Click to expand...

XP is VERY snappy for me -- I don't even run with a swapfile :)
 
CWallace said:
Good to hear. :)

I have two HP 2510ps with the 1.33GHz ULV Core 2 Duo CPU and 4GB of RAM. I can literally brew a pot of coffee waiting for Vista to boot and even XP is not all that snappy, though it is far better.

Anyway, for real work I have my MBP. :)
Click to expand...
Yikes, I'd expect those to run XP quite well.
 
Eidorian said:
Yikes, I'd expect those to run XP quite well.
Click to expand...

Yeah, something doesn't sound right. 1.33GHz dual core processor + 4GB of RAM should be plenty to work with in Windows XP.

Hell, before I got the MSI Wind, I had an ASUS Eee PC 4G with a 900MHz Celeron processor and it ran Windows XP just fine. Sure, the screen was small as hell and the keyboard was VERY cramped, but I never had performance issues.

Something else is going on with your system if you get sluggish performance in XP with all of that power/memory.
 
barcodebawtv said:
I consider the iPhone and the Touch to be their "compact laptop" They can do more, and have more storage than the Asus Eee PC - plus they're cheaper
Click to expand...
I'd like to see a bigger device with a similar overall shape, and with these additional features over the iPod touch:
  • Higher resolution
  • iLife, iWork, Preview
  • Split screen (like that of graphing calculators)
  • Better specs in general
  • iPhone OS with additional features to better scale it up to this device
arn said:
They just have to differentiate it enough from the low end MacBook.
Click to expand...
Which would be pretty easy.

arn said:
I think the appeal is a full Mac OS X mini laptop.
Click to expand...
Yup. That and/or a larger iPod touch. I don't see anything in the middle, software-wise.

sinisterdesign said:
there will be a low cost, entry level laptop introduced next month. not sure how cheap & whether or not it would be considered a "netbook" or not, though.
Click to expand...
How do you know this?

retroneo said:
Leopard is Sooooo slow on an Atom (check out the plenty of videos showing it)

I can't imagine Apple releasing it.
Click to expand...
Completely agreed. I think that and the low resolution of small displays is stopping Apple from releasing a mini-laptop.

Eidorian said:
This is what I suspect. Snow Leopard is going to be the more scalable version of all of Leopards features. Not to mention cutting out some of the OS bloat.
Click to expand...
Hmmm. I like that idea.
 
Dedicated graphics (now) and dual-core Atom CPUs (soon)

Asus certainly believes there's a market for Netbooks in the >$600 range. I expect we'll see dual core Atom CPUs in some Netbooks before the holidays.

Asus N10, from: J&R

ASUN10JA2.PNG


Intel Atom N270 1.6 GHz / 2GB RAM / 250GB Hard Drive / GeForce 9300M GS / Webcam / 802.11ABGN / Fingerprint Reader / Windows Vista Business

Box Contents: Asus N10, 6-Cell Lithium-Ion Battery, AC Power Adapter, AC Power Cord; Software Bundle: Windows Vista Business, 1-Year Limited Warranty
Intel Atom N270 1.6 GHz Processor
512 KB L2 Cache, 533 MHz Front Bus speed
2048 MB DDR2 RAM
250 GB SATA Hard Drive
10.2" diagonal WSVGA (1024 x 600) Widescreen Display
Integrated Webcam
Nvidia GeForce 9300M GS with 256MB Dedicated Graphics Memory
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 (Switchable Graphics)
802.11a/b/g/n Wireless
Card Reader
Fingerprint Reader
 
Another one here for +++MSI wind.
I got this thing last night and it is truly amazing. It was a little on the expensive side ($539 + taxes ~$610) compared to the Asus eee ($450 + taxes) and Acer Aspire one ($379 + taxes) - (Canadian funds + taxes), but the 2.6lbs and 5+ hour battery life (6-cell battery) makes up for it all.
Its fast, screen is bright, and keyboard is very useable.
Someone mentioned the BT mouse. Thats a great idea!

I really wish Apple does come out with a netbook. I haven't loaded mine with OSx yet because there are a few bugs (headphones don't work which I need when taking it on the plane).
I use it for taking notes in class, browsing the web on the couch, and chatting. My iMac at home does the rest.

However I really want to see what the new MacBooks have to offer. I go for vacations for 1-2 months and would need a "primary" laptop for Photoshop, videos, etc. If the MacBook is portable enough for school - notebook, laptop, and DSLR adds up - then I'll sell the Wind or keep it till I need something next summer.
 
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elcid said:
Listen to either TWiT or gdgt's new podcast this week and you will see why Apple won't enter this market.

One of the guys says he was sitting next to a rep from Sony who said netbooks are "a race to the bottom". There are such small margins in the netbooks arena that Sony (who is a higher priced, "better quality" brand like Apple) is very reluctant to get into that market.

I agree with him. Look at some of the machines and then think of how much they are actually making. Apple is such a margin business, if manufacturers are putting out machines for 399 for pennies Apple would have to charge 4-599 for the same laptop.

I highly doubt they will go this direction, closest thing would maybe be a new spin on the 12" PB, maybe a 12" MB. They certainly dont want to get pulled into a price war with 399.
Click to expand...

Agreed. They currently have a very successful line, selling at record voulumes. To put something out in the netbook range would cannibalize their existing sales. I don't think they're facing that kind of market pressure at the moment.
 
Cannibalization

tinfai said:
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Agreed. They currently have a very successful line, selling at record voulumes. To put something out in the netbook range would cannibalize their existing sales. I don't think they're facing that kind of market pressure at the moment.
Click to expand...

The problem is that they are letting a whole market slip through their fingers which has a dramatic impact on OSX adoption. This market is mixed between people wanting a cheap portable and people wanting a light travel companion. The second half of the market may already own a Mac, but are forced to Linux or Windows because of Apple not having an offering. The first group are squeezed out by the factor of two for an entry level computer.

If the economy is as bad as people think, then being a premium product isn't necessarily where you want to be. If Apple can pull one out of the hat next month I'll get at least three immediately. We're a two-mac household, and the alternative is to ditch my wife's iBook and go for an Asus (or maybe now that I have heard of them a MSI Wind).

Getting to the next echelon for Apple in market share is a tough battle. They can still charge a 20-25% premium over the competition and make it attractive; no destruction of margins on this...
 
retroneo said:
Leopard is Sooooo slow on an Atom (check out the plenty of videos showing it)
Click to expand...

Check those videos, and tell me if the "hard disk activity" LED is constantly on....

We bought a bunch of eeePCs, and the standard SSDs are really slow comparing to hard drives. Whenever the system seems to drag, the "disk" LED is brightly lit.

In a $500 laptop, you don't get performance SSDs - you basically get flash thumbdrives.
 
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