MSI Wind netbook with 6 cell battery soon?

While doing the daily prowl, I came across a post suggesting that the MSI Wind netbook should be available soon with the 6 cell battery. The MSI Wind has been around for quite a while already, as many of you know, but the 6 cell battery is just now starting to trickle out. Having seen how much power the 6 cell packs, I have to wonder now if I was a little hasty to get an Acer Aspire One.It’s not that the One is a bad netbook, not by any stretch, but I’m thinking now that the slightly larger form factor of the MSI Wind, while still small, may have been a better choice for me. However, I’m brought back by two problems with the MSI Wind, although one is easy to solve.

1) I’m a fan of solid state drives when you’re talking about netbooks. Netbooks are small, inexpensive, and take a beating. At least mine do. I have no problems carrying them around with me, and if I bump into things with them, it’s not a big deal since it was only a few hundred dollars. Granted, I’m not about to go throwing them around, but if I decided I wanted to use it as a football, I wouldn’t have to worry about screwing up the hard drive because there’s no moving parts in the solid state drive.

2) It has XP on it. That’s easy to solve, obviously. In fact, I think I’d try out Ubuntu Netbook Remix and see how that goes. It’s obviously good enough for Dell since they’re using it on the Dell Mininote (Dell Inspiron 910? I still hate that name). Then again, Dell has been using Ubuntu on its linux machines for some time now, but just the same, I am a Ubuntu fan.

There’s a couple of others things the MSI Wind has going for it: it’s aesthetically pleasing. There’s not a lot of wasted space around the keyboard unlike some other netbooks, and the bezel around the LCD is also somewhat limited. It’s a nice, efficient use of space. Other netbooks should take notice.

It also doesn’t hurt that it’s a lot easier to upgrade the RAM if you need to, but also keep in mind that’s a little bit more power drain going on. Still, a 6 cell battery in a netbook? You’re going to get hours and hours on that thing. Maybe not Asus’s (claimed?) 8 or 9 hours on their machines, but still a lot.

At the very least, it has a better keyboard layout than most of the others. Again, other netbooks should take notice.

Anyhow, they might be out some time in the next week or two, at least through importers. Check out jkOnTheRun for more on the Wind.