MSI U110 ECO netbook-9 hours battery life

With the netbook phenomenon still in full swing, consumers want the best bang for their buck. This "bang" usually translates to maximum battery life as well decent performance when it comes to multimedia.MSI has just released the world’s most energy efficient netbook in the U110 ECO that can run on its battery for up to nine hours at a time. This means no more being tethered to the power outlet and the smugness of knowing that your netbook is more eco-friendly than everyone else’s.

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The U110 ECO’s claim to fame is that it gets about 9 hours of batery life from a 6 cell abttery. It achieves this by using the low power 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z530 CPU and other power management features. The netbook will also be available with a 3 cell battery, but I wouldn’t expect 9 hours of battery life from that model. 4 hours seems a bit more realistic.

The netbook will have a 10 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel display, 1GB of RAM, a 160Gb hard drive, 3 USB ports, a 4-in-1 card reader, a 1.3MP or 2MP webcam, and 802.11b/g or 802.11b/gn graphics and optional Bluetooth.

One thing I hadn’t realized is that MSI is throwing in an ATI Mobility Radeon HD3200 graphics card, which should provide better graphics performance than the integrated Intel GMA 950 graphics found on most Atom-powered netbooks.The changes to the newest member of the MSI Wind family come in the form of a 2 GB RAM option, an Intel Atom Z530 chip, a discrete ATI Mobility Radeon HD3200 GPU, and the unexpected Intel Poulsbo US15W chipset.

As for size, the U110 Eco is no different from other Wind netbooks. The Eco measures 10.24 x 7.09-inches, and has a maximum thickness of 1.24-inches. Expect a weight of about 2.3 pounds, battery included. While the U110 Eco maintains the same size of previous models, MSI claims the Eco has its biggest netbook keyboard ever, as well as a larger trackpad. Judging from the pictures, MSI didn't skimp on the space bar size, and placed the trackpad directly under the spacebar, making for smooth and efficient typing.

One interesting thing to note is that the MSI U110 ECO doesn’t sacrifice on hard drive space. Instead of using a solid state flash drive to save energy, the ECO can come with an 80 to 160 GB SATA hard drive and still manages to conserve energy.

Still there is no word on price or availability yet but the new Wind u110 ECO, a power-saving netboook that offers about 9 hours of battery life, Intel Atom Z530 1.6GHz processor, 1GB RAM, 160GB hard drive and integrated graphics is expect to arrive somewhere in between $400-$500.

If the battery life claim hold somewhere in the realm of 'truth', this would be quite the accomplishment. It's about time. AMD graphics and chipsets are not only low power consumption, but they're also damn powerful. I think "780g" is all one must say.