Seeing the MSI X320 at CES made my pants hurt enough that I’ll be picking one up when they come out in April. A steady complaint about the X320, though, is that while it’s stylish like a MacBook Air, it’s only got an Atom processor.
Well it seems that MSI is planning to release a higher-end notebook in the X-Slim series that’ll contain a bona fide Pentium CPU for anyone craving more power to work with video or play higher-end games. A company rep told IDG News that the Pentium-based X-Slim notebooks will cost over $1,000, while the Atom-based ones will cost under $1,000.
I’ll probably stick with the Atom version since I’m just slinging around text and low-res video, but the higher-end models should be good news for anyone who liked the idea of the X320 but wanted something more capable than an Atom CPU.
No word on the actual release dates other than the April date for the X320, but it’s probably safe to assume that we’d see these after the first wave, not before.