We’ve seen a real swing in the market perception of notebook form factor go from the humble 4:3 aspect ratio 14in to the more exotic 16:10 widescreen. Ultra portables were the new thing and we now see a move to desktop replacement units with all the bells and whistles. While large formed notebooks are great for the users with a static location, ultra portables are still the easiest and best way of conducting business for students, business people and the road warriors.

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MSI has catered to the users after an ultra portable but still interested in the aesthetics of a widescreen aspect ratio display on a budget. Some sacrifices have needed to be made to achieve this - its small chassis completely legacy free other than a D-Sub output for projectors and monitors. It does have three USB 2.0 ports and front mounted audio and a single 4-pin FireWire for DV cam while headphones are a must have as the integrated audio is quite tinny.

Cost has been kept down by taking advantage of the mobile variant of Intel’s Celeron processor although it lacks some of the major optimisations found in the Pentium 4 and Pentium M CPUs. These lack of SSE optimisations found in its bigger brothers does somewhat cripple this as far as multimedia usage and performance goes, as its 2316 point PCMark04 and 2862 3DMark01SE scores shows - but the choice of CPU and integrated shared graphics indicates this isn’t one for gaming. Although not ready for the latest games it does serve its purpose for productivity software such as Office or emailing.

Above the keyboard are four quick-launch buttons for your email client, Internet Explorer, wireless and a customisable button for your most commonly used application.

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The combo DVD-ROM/CD-RW works well for DVD playback and makes good use of the widescreen display. Unfortunately this notebook managed only 112 minutes during testing, not enough to consider it a must-have companion for road warriors as you’ll need to bring your power adaptor and charge as you go. Small, light and well priced, it may not be a gamer’s dream, but a product like this will definitely get attention from those after something small for work.