MSI Wind Top AE1900

Testing the MSI Wind Top AE1900
Finding a second life with the market for netbooks, MSI includes the recipe for the sauce Wind desktops, with a touch of suspicion.

More: Touch friendly interface, careful design, compactness, wide screen 16 / 9, comes with keyboard and mouse, low power consumption.

Less : Power Limited, unable to play HD videos.


Vive la crise!
The emergence of netbooks in the computing world has melted prices on laptops. After the success in this market, MSI intends to reoffend with desktops. To do this, the manufacturer takes the good old recipes of Wind in the AE1900: the inevitable Intel Atom (N230 here), 1 GB of RAM, a 1.3 megapixel webcam, a hard disk of 160 GB, all running Windows XP SP3.

The MSI Wind Tower is inspired by the look of the iMac. The unit is well housed behind the screen. The latter seems to float in the air as it is encased by a transparent plastic frame. A design at once compact and successful. On the left side, you can even see a DVD burner, while the equivalent Asus is lacking. Another good point, as this machine is composed from elements of netbooks, the power consumption (and thus heat output) is reduced.

Despite the low screen resolution (only 1366x768 pixels for a slab of 18.5 inches), he appreciates the great panoramic view. Especially since MSI has equipped with a resistive touch screen. Quality equipment, but unfortunately the touch interface is very rudimentary, it just accesses to different pages or shortcuts are clustered applications such as Word or Gimp.

In contrast to handwriting recognition (from any application) is promising. The little Atom processor with only 1024 MB of RAM takes a few seconds to decipher because each sign designed finger. In addition, the limited power of Wind Space prevents playback of Full HD video or HD.

The MSI Wind Touch AE1900 combines the design of the iMac and component input range of netbooks. Despite all this integrated than enough for the office and Internet. Its large touch screen is a definite asset for the whole family.

	Sheet Asus Eee Top
Communications	WiFi 802.11b/g/n, Ethernet 10/100/1000 Mbits/s
Graphics Controller	Intel 945GSE
Hard Drive	160 Go SATA II à 5400 tpm
Card Reader	SD/SDHC/MS/MS Pro
Monitor	15.6 pouces
Poids	4.5 Kg
Processor	Intel Atom N270 à 1.6 GHz
RAM	1 Go de RAM DDR2 à 667 MHz
Optical Storage	non
Processor Technology	Intel Atom