The Adventures of Scout (my MSI Wind U100x Netbook)

Ok last night I wailed about * Scout’s (the name of my MSI Wind U100x) minor current of electricity emanating from the VGA port issue which I’m glad to report has dispersed as quickly as it appeared, indicating that it might merely be a static electricity situation as I was using it on my bed (the location of which may or may not be relevant but I suppose is worth noting anyway).

At any rate, said issue is gone now, with no small measure of relief. This prompts me to proceed with discussing the unboxing and preparation of said Scout. First off, le box unwrapped:

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The Perfect Writing Machine

This post is about my eternal search for a laptop as a writing machine, as opposed to a coding machine, gaming machine or whatever – else machine.

First, the best so far. To date, nothing I’ve tried, and I’ve tried a lot, beats the experience of the 6 (?) year old PowerBook G4. Inasmuch as I dislike all sorts of hype from all sorts of manufacturers (yes and that includes Jobs), they have got it right with this one. I wrote about it in the defunct PWIT and I’ll say it again here. The few times I managed to use this really knocked me out. Not only were the keys big and easy to find, the material (anodized aluminum) was cool and smooth to the touch and seemed better resistant to scratches than the Titanium models. More importantly the keyboard gives a reassuring just – right click each time that never made you second guess whether you did it right. The body seemed never to get too warm (somewhat contested, this) and was compact and light. Finally the screen graphics was typical Mac, meaning it was never too glaring and still gave good light running on batteries which normally goes down a level or two to preserve juice.

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