VC funding for cleantech startups tumbled in the third quarter, last week Vestas announced plans to layoff 3,000 employees, and on Wednesday, First Wind shelved IPO plans amid weak demand— the wind energy sector is certainly facing its share of headwinds but there are still signs of life.
On Tuesday, the South Korean government announced that it will invest 9.2 trillion won, or $8.2 billion, through 2019 to build offshore wind farms. According to reports, the goal is to have 500 wind turbines along the country’s west coast in the Yellow Sea with a capacity of 2500 megawatt hours. → Read More
Alternative energy is a growing market, and though many states offer tax credits, rebates, and other incentives to promote clean energy, it can still prove to be an expensive proposition.
It generally also requires plugging your energy source into the grid so you’re not left in the dark when the wind calms or the sun lingers behind clouds.
Here is a roundup of solutions that can help power a home. → Read More
Terra-Gen Power announced closing $1.2 billion in construction financing and wind turbine orders. The company will build four wind power projects for the Alta Wind Energy Center in Kern County, California, for which Vestas-American Wind Technology will provide 190 turbines with a capacity of 570 megawatts. This is the largest number of wind turbines ever ordered for a single site in the U.S.
The Alta Wind Energy Center currently hosts 150 megawatt GE turbines and is expected to become the largest wind energy farm in the country with a capacity of 3,000 megawatts when completed. Terra-Gen has agreements with Southern California Edison to feed the energy into its grid. → Read More
MSI has sold millions of their Wind series of netbooks. Let’s all give them a round of applause shall we? But what does this mean for you guys? Good things, as luck would have it. Instead of some useless, commemorative award, they roll out the U135 model. And unlike most “Yay us!” products, this one actually has some worthwhile upgrades under the hood. → Read More
It looks like MSI is getting set to launch a 12-inch Windows 7 netbook from its U200 series. You’ll recall that the company released the Vista-based U210 back in mid-September, and this new one, the U230, appears to be very similar with the exception of the newer operating system and a bumped ATI Radeon GPU. → Read More
Okay, here’s the MSI Wind U110 ECO. It’s a netbook, through and through, with the added twist of a nine-cell battery good for what MSI claims to be over 15 hours of battery life. Not bad considering the weight of the computer is kept at a very-portable 3.2 pounds. → Read More
MSI’s gone the AMD Neo route with the Wind U210, available now for $429 at Amazon and Newegg. The U210’s got a 12.1-inch screen with a 1366×768 resolution, 1.6GHz CPU, 2GB of RAM, 250GB hard drive, Vista Home Premium, 3.2-pound weight, and a six cell battery good for over four hours according to MSI (five hours, according to Amazon’s product page). → Read More
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. → Read More
Hey, if you guys are thinking of starting your own netbook line — and why not, everyone else is doing it — take note that MSI has released the Wind U123 with a six-cell battery as the standard battery, while still keeping the machine under three pounds. Upgrading to a nine-cell battery only costs $30, too, and pushes the weight to a still-manageable 3.2 pounds. → Read More
Johannes over at German site Eee-PC.de was able to push a nine-cell MSI Wind U115 – the one with the hybrid SSD + HDD setup announced at CES this year – past the 25 hour mark using the Battery Eater notebook benchmarking test. → Read More
Here are some more details on that MSI Wind U115 Hybrid that we discussed earlier this month. The big selling point is the SSD + HDD setup, which allows the device to operate using the solid state drive while writing files to the hard drive, resulting in much longer battery life. → Read More
Aw, there I go giving away the entire post in the title again. I should have made it something like “What’s in your city’s water supply? MSI knows! Full story on the ten o’clock newscast” or something sensational like that. Oh well. Laptop’s got some interesting info about what we’ll see from MSI at CES, including: → Read More
Hark! Here’s a good deal on the MSI Wind. For one week only, starting today, MSI is offering a $50 mail-in rebate on the Wind with XP, 120GB hard drive, and 1GB of RAM. Buy.com has them for $299 after the rebate. That’s a good, good, good deal, so hurry. MSI Wind U100-439US [Buy.com] → Read More
Apparently MSI has recently swapped out the Synaptics touchpad on the MSI Wind with a touchpad from Sentellic. What’s the difference, you might ask? Well, that thing you’re able to do with Synaptics touchpads where you gently stroke your finger up and down the right-hand side of the pad to scroll up and down web pages and documents isn’t available on the Sentellic models “due to legal issues,” according to Mobility Today. The Sentellic pad has tap zones instead, where tapping your finger creates up and down movement — might as well just use the keyboard’s arrow keys. For Wind owners who long for the days of Synaptics-stroking, members at the MSIWind.net forums have outlined how to order an $8 replacement Synaptics pad from MSI’s competitor, ASUS (here’s the product page). Installation isn’t for the faint of heart, but if you’ve ever cracked open a notebook, it shouldn’t be too bad. → Read More
This little guy, the Febot, charges your batteries, literally. Like, it literally charges Duracell (and other, lesser brands) batteries. Well, “literally” is a bit strong, as it’s only a concept, but whatever. → Read More
Holy crap, you could drive a truck under that thing. That’s a nine cell battery for the MSI Wind netbook, which is available on Ebay’s UK site according to a post in the MsiWind.net forums. The item ships from China for a grand total of around £70 – roughly $115 in US dollars. Owners of this gigantic lump are reporting over 6.5 hours of battery life. When I tested the six-cell MSI Wind, I was able to get a little over five hours before having to recharge so I’d almost think you could squeeze 8+ hours out of a nine-cell battery with everything tweaked to maximize power consumption. [via Wired] → Read More
The Averatec netbook that we caught “wind” of (pun majorly intended) back in August is now shipping. It’s called the Averatec Buddy and you’ll remember that it’s actually pretty much a rebranded MSI Wind, except that the Buddy has dropped the Bluetooth connection and popped in a 160GB hard drive. Oh, and the 10.2-inch screen features AveraBrite! Also, Averatec lists the Buddy’s weight at 1.65 pounds with its three-cell battery, even though the 3-cell Wind weighs 2.3 pounds. I’m going to assume that Averatec’s weight is incorrect, because the site also says that it’s got a 12.1-inch WXGA screen even though the product’s title lists it as the “Averatec Buddy Notebook 10.2 in” – if they’ve got a 12.1-inch MSI Wind that only weighs 1.65 pounds, I’ll buy three of them. Averatec Buddy [ShopAveratec.com] → Read More
Wow, lotsa good deals today. J&R is selling the black MSI Wind with Windows XP for $399 after a $50 price break and $50 mail-in rebate. And – and! – it would appear that they have them in stock, too. This is the three-cell battery version, if you’re wondering. But for $399, that’s a hard deal to pass up if you’re looking for a good netbook. The $50 mail-in rebate is good until the end of the month. MSI Microstar WindBook U100-016US [J&R via dealnews] → Read More
The fine folks over at Fudzilla have managed to wrangle photos of the upcoming MSI Wind U120, which should be available at the end of the year. Specs appear to be very similar to the current MSI Wind U100, except that the U120 will feature a SIM-based 3.5G wireless chip, presumably to attract a more business-oriented crowd. The netbook will still have a 10-inch screen and decent keyboard, and hard drive options are reported to be either a 120GB conventional drive or a 20- or 40-gigabyte SSD, which seems odd since we normally hear about 16GB and 32GB solid state drives. I also wouldn’t be surprised to find out that the processor would be one of the dual-core Atoms, since the U120 isn’t supposed to ship until December. Fudzilla claims it’ll cost under $600, which would be consistent with MSI’s aggressive pricing strategy. A couple more photos after the jump… → Read More
Sylvania had the right idea when it rebranded the 7-inch Everex Cloudbook as the Sylvania “g” netbook except for the fact that the Cloudbook never really took off. Then came the 8.9-inch Sylvania MESO, which was a kinda-sorta rebranded Amtek Elego by Digital Gadgets, a licensee of Sylvania. Huh? Now, Sylvania seems to be on the right track by rebranding the 10-inch MSI Wind as the Sylvania g MAGNI. Price and availability aren’t known yet but we do know that it’ll have a 120GB hard drive, run Windows XP or Ubuntu Netbook Remix, and have 1GB of RAM. [Laptop via SlashGear] → Read More
