Hands on with the MSI WindPad 100W

Hands on with the MSI Wind Pad 100W

Manufacturer: MSI

We briefly spotted an early model of MSI's WindPad 100 back at Computex this year, but we've now finally had a chance to play with the latest version at an MSI event in Taipei. Since Computex, MSI has decided to split the WindPad 100 into two flavours; the 100W (Wintel) and the 100A (ARM), which was formerly known as the WindPad 110.

There are, in fact, two ARM-based versions; one 10.1in model, and another which is still under wraps. We were led to believe that the designs will reflect the WindPads we saw before, although MSI wouldn't reveal any specifications about the 100A, saying that it still needed more work.


On the plus side, MSI was more than happy for us to get our mitts on the WindPad 100W, which includes a 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z530 dual-core (Moorestown) CPU and Windows 7 Home Premium. Frankly, however, this combination results in a tablet that's sluggish to use, as you can see in the video above. Essentially, it's netbook-class performance in a tablet-shaped case.


On the subject of casing, the chassis is still constructed from plastic and weighs around 800g, although we estimate that it's around twice as thick as the iPad. Meanwhile, the capacitive multi-touch display can accept up to two touches at once using Windows 7.