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MSI Wind U115 Hybrid

The first netbook with an SSD... and an HDD

The screen stretches to 10in and is surrounded by a fairly thick bezel. There's a 1.3Mp webcam built into the the top of the bezel and a microphone positioned over to the right. The 1024 x 600 resolution screen has a matte rather than glossy finish, so it doesn't suffer from the high reflectivity seen on shinier models. That said, the colours are a little less pronounced, but still reasonable.

MSI Wind U115

The classic MSI Wind profile

The U115 retains the same curvy looks as the original Wind, although this time it's finished in grey and black.

MSI Wind U115

Standard netbook ports

The netbook's well equipped for wireless communication, with both Bluetooth and 802.11n built in. The ports are split between the two sides, with power and two USB sockets on the left. Over on the right-hand side you'll find 10/100Mb/s Ethernet, VGA, headphone, microphone, four-in-one card reader (SD/MMC/Memory Stick/Memory Stick Pro) and an additional USB port.

The card reader doesn't swallow the card whole, leaving it protruding slightly from the edge of the machine, so it's not really suitable to use for permanent storage. However, given the amount of disk space already on board this isn't the issue it might be on less-capacious netbooks.

MSI Wind U115

A decent keyboard - despite the placing of the Fn key

The keyboard fills the width of the unit and features decent-sizes keys, so you shouldn't find typing a problem with a little bit of practice. Annoyingly, however, the Fn key occupies the bottom left spot where you'd expect Ctrl to be, so if you use a lot of keyboard shortcuts you may find you keep pressing it by accident. The touchpad is a little on the small side too - odd, given how much space there is to accommodate a wider one - but it's still usable.

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