Netbook review - MSI Wind U115 Hybrid

MSI scored big when it released its initial Wind U100, showing other vendors how good a 10in netbook can be. The U115 Hybrid has a number of new features; however, the most impressive aspect of the U115 is its battery life. My UserBench Battery 2008 benchmark is pretty tough, but here the 5,100mAh Lithium Ion battery delivered an astonishing 6 hours 56 minutes – that leaves every other netbook I’ve tested for dead. Instead of the original Intel 1.6 GHz Atom N270 processor, the U115 features the next-generation 1.6GHz Atom Z530 processor. Surprisingly, application performance was fractionally slower that the Wind U100, but it was usually only by about 2-3% at most. The other new features and the reason for the ‘hybrid’ moniker is the dual built-in storage: an 8GB PQI solid-state drive (SSD) as well as a 160GB hard drive. My test unit was configured with Windows XP SP3 operating system running on the SSD, while the 160GB hard drive was simply bulk storage. The problem is that 8GB doesn’t really give you much room as a C: drive, and sadly, both the My Documents and Program Files folders were set to the C: drive, too. I’d strongly recommend installing your bigger programs to the 160GB drive. Unfortunately, MSI’s Australian arm didn’t know the price of the U115 yet, which made it pretty hard to gauge its real value.

Overall I give the MSI Wind U115 Hybrid a 6/10 – Dual storage needs better configuration, but the seven-hour battery will do me.

Encoding Video Files To Portable Devices

Rather than reinvent the wheel, I’ve taken my original RockPod 2008 and combined it into RBT2009. I’ve added extra features not seen in RockPod 2008, such as the ability to encode at different frame rates as well as change the level of the audio track. There are also other changes, but without going into them all, the ‘Video Encoder’ section is aimed at quickly getting your audio and video files into any one of a range of formats.
The first thing you should aim to do here is choose your video codec. As I said up front, the video codec really determines just about everything in a video file – 90% of the data in an audio/video file is video, and it sets the file container and audio codecs that can be used with it. You can choose wither by codec or by device, whichever is easier for you. However, learning the codec options is far better because I can’t include every video-capable device on the list.
Where possible, selecting the video codec will automatically select a suitable corresponding audio codec. For example, if you choose H.264 video encoding, the audio codec option automatically changes to AAC and the file format when you save will default to MP4 – all three will combine happily to ensure you get a workable file at the other end of the process.
You’ll notice that for most settings, the default option is ‘Use original’. That’s because the key to fast encoding is to do as little as possible with the original video on its way through to your desired format. And really, mucking around with it is unlikely to make it better. The only case where that might not be true is when using the Deinterlace switch. Deinterlasing combines interlaced half-frames into single progressive frames to get rid of the comb effect, and it can make a difference on LCD screens.
The last thing that may need some explaining is the audio level shift option. I’ve set the audio amplification factor by default to 0dB, which means it won’t change anything. Move the slider into positive territory and you’ll increase the audio level. Move it to the left and it will reduce the audio level. Don’t go overboard in either direction because too much amplification (or grain) will cause overload distortion and make it sound dreadful.