AMD-based MSI Wind coming soon, touchscreen tablet next year

U210

MSI’s got a 12-inch Wind netbook rolling out to the US in the next few weeks. The U210 will feature an AMD CPU, though, which ought to place it in direct competition with Gateway’s LT3100. We can probably expect to see shorter battery life (the LT3100 promises five hours) in exchange for some extra power over Intel’s Atom offerings.

The U210 will apparently ship in two configurations: an XP version for $379 and a Vista version for $429. Both will, according to Gizmodo, feature 1GB of RAM and a 160GB hard drive. I’d normally expect the Vista version to have at least 2GB of RAM, though we’ll see if that actually happens or not. The 12-inch screen, too, means that it’ll have a decent resolution — likely 1280×800.

MSI is also planning to debut a touchscreen Wind netbook based on Intel’s upcoming Pinetrail initiative (see previous coverage here). We won’t see the U150, as it’ll be called, until CES in January. It’ll apparently be a touchscreen convertible tablet-type affair, though.

[via Gizmodo]