July 2 - 9:05am EDT   Many of the Windows PC makers building ultraportable notebooks based on Intel's low-cost CULV platform are learning first-hand that their cheaper case designs aren't enough to sustain the systems, a research note from AmTech analyst Doug Freedman says. Many of the companies design the systems with plastic shells to keep their prices down but are discovering that the cases are cracking, often forcing major replacements. Which companies are affected aren't mentioned, but Lenovo and MSI are some of the first making systems in the category with the IdeaPad U350 and X-Slim line respectively. [full story]

July 2 - 7:50am EDT   MSI today rounded out the hardware specs for the last of the current wave of X-Slim ultraportables. The 14-inch X400 will be the more colorful model of the group with "personalized" color bezels around the lip of the frame and its trackpad. It's also billed as one of the thinnest, lightest systems at its screen size at under an inch thick and 3.3 pounds. [full story]

June 12 - 1:30pm EDT   MSI's flagship X-Slim series notebook, the MSI X600, has received specs for two of its variations today through a new leak. The company has previously only released teasers of the specifications for the notebook PC, which is meant to compete with the MacBook Air. The 15.6-inch notebook sports a 1366x768 resolution and is powered by Intel's CULV platform, in a package that is less than one-inch thick. [full story]

June 3 - 3:55pm EDT   At the Computex show currently taking place in Taiwan, MSI has shown off its WindBOX nettop PC powered by NVIDIA's Ion chipset. The computer's presence at the show indicates MSI is the latest to jump on the NVIDIA Ion bandwagon, with Acer and Lenovo confirmed to be releasing Ion-based PCs, with ASUS, Foxconn, Pegatron and, most recently, Dell and HP, rumored to be releasing their own as well. [full story]

June 2 - 1:50pm EDT   Computer makers HP and Dell will both launch netbooks and all-in-one desktop PCs running on NVIDIA's Ion platform sometime between the start of July and the end of September, says a Tuesday Digitimes report. The unnamed industry sources claim the two manufacturers will join ASUS, Foxconn, Lenovo and Pegatron in providing Ion-based computers, all of which have been linked earlier to the hybrid graphics and system chipset. Models and their features aren't mentioned in the slip. [full story]

May 29 - 1:40pm EDT   A new version of the MSI WindBOX nettop PC, the DE200, was spotted in Europe recently. The main and most significant change of the DE200 from lesser WindBOX nettops is its use of an ATI Radeon HD 4350 graphics card with a dedicated 512MB of RAM instead of the integrated Intel GMA 950 chipset. Otherwise, the new WindBOX shares the same 1.6GHz Intel Atom 230 CPU, 1GB of RAM and Wi-Fi. [full story]

May 27 - 3:20pm EDT   MSI this afternoon said it has started shipping the X-Slim X340 within the US. The ultraportable initially surfaces in a single, $900 spec ($800 at Amazon) with a CULV (Consumer Ultra Low Voltage) 1.4GHz Core 2 Solo for its processor, 2GB of RAM and a 320GB hard drive. 802.11n Wi-Fi, a 1.3-megapixel webcam and Bluetooth are equally stock, as is a 4-cell battery. MSI doesn't provide an estimate for battery life but says the Intel chip uses a sixth the energy of a regular notebook and so doesn't need a larger battery pack. [full story]

May 22 - 3:05pm EDT   Complementing the US launch of the U123, MSI today started supplying the Wind U115 Hybrid to UK shops. The netbook is the company's first system to use Intel's Atom Z500 line and uses a 1.6GHz example of the lower-powered chip along with a unique hard drive and solid-state drive combo to extend battery life. Unofficial tests show the system lasting as long as 13 hours on its standard 6-cell battery and 25 hours on a 9-cell pack. [full story]

May 22 - 12:10pm EDT   MSI on Friday started shipping its Wind U123 netbook to the US. The 10-inch system we tried at CTIA is MSI's first with the slightly faster 1.66GHz Atom N280 and centers on battery life; a relatively large 6-cell pack is stock, and an optional 9-cell unit extends its battery life to over 8 hours. Lid colors are less conservative with blue and red as options. [full story]

May 15 - 10:45am EDT   MSI chose the end of the week to launch its newest flagship gaming notebook, the GX723. The 17-inch desktop replacement centers on a 512MB GeForce GT 130M graphics chipset good enough to run modern games smoothly as well as MSI's characteristic Turbo Mode, which lets owners overclock the Core 2 Duo processor inside as long as the system is on AC power. The PC creator also manages to tuck five speakers into the limited space to produce Dolby sound without an external setup. [full story]

May 14 - 7:45am EDT   MSI this morning claimed a further foothold in ultraportable PCs by providing early details of two larger X-Slim notebooks. The 14-inch X400 and 15-inch X600 are meant to improve not only on the 13-inch X340 but to offer a still-larger alternative to systems like the MacBook Air; despite their sizes, both are less than an inch thick and weigh far less than other systems in their class at 3.3 pounds for the X400 and 4.6 pounds for the X600. Both also use Intel's Consumer Ultra Low Voltage (CULV) processors to provide better performance than a netbook but with less cost and battery use (as well as less performance) than the Core 2 Duo S used in Apple's system. [full story]

May 13 - 4:40pm EDT   In a rare move of its own, AMD today launched a factory-overclocked version of its ATI Radeon HD 4890 graphics chipset. The move takes the 850MHz core clock speed of the standard edition and boosts it to 1GHz, rendering the new version the first graphics processor of any kind to reach the milestone. AMD claims that the simple shift boosts the peak computing power from 1.36 teraflops to 1.6 and is theoretically faster than NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 285. [full story]

May 13 - 11:05am EDT   MSI's first true ultraportable to use Intel's CULV (Consumer Ultra Low Voltage) platform has likely been leaked a day ahead of its actual launch. Put into the Wind netbook family, the U200 as found by Engadget will be closer to a notebook with a CULV processor (presumed to be the 1.2GHz Celeron M 723) and a 12-inch, 1366x768 LED-backlit display. It will also have much more in base specifications than netbooks with 2GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive and GMA 4500 video that can drive HD video playback. [full story]

May 12 - 9:00am EDT   A leak of Intel's notebook processor plans for the second half of 2009 show the company moving aggressively into its new platforms during the summer. Those within notebook builders tell DigiTimes that the Nehalem-based notebook processor line, Calpella, is still on track for summer and is slated for mid- to high-range notebooks costing about $1,200 or more. Whether or not this will involve only quad-core processors, as recently rumored, isn't known. [full story]

May 8 - 8:50am EDT   MSI today stepped into audio devices with the launch of its Syren line. The series is headlined by the SyrenSound X-Fi, one of the few non-Creative sound cards to use X-Fi hardware. It uses the same technology as Sound Blaster cards to restore missing detail in compressed audio as well as to introduce EAX effects, and supports up to 7.1-channel sound while reducing the CPU overhead versus integrated sound chipsets. The PCI Express-based board currently requires Windows XP or Vista. [full story]