MSI Announces WindPad 110W With New AMD Z-01
by Dustin Sklavos on July 7, 2011 4:26 PM ESTThe tablet market is expanding every bit as rapidly as netbooks did when they first arrived, and then some. MSI has announced their entry into the market today, and it's a very different breed of tablet compared to the largely Android-based units available. The new WindPad 110W has a heck of a lot going on under the hood, including some new kit from AMD.
Unlike the Android-based tablets that have been multiplying in the market, the WindPad 110W is running a full-on Windows 7 Home Premium installation, and a peek under the hood reveals a beastly amount of hardware for a tablet.
At the center of the 110W is the AMD Z-01 APU, a 1GHz dual-core processor with a TDP of just 5.9 watts. Essentially a lower-clocked, much lower-power version of the E-350 we're so fond of, the Z-01 brings with it Radeon HD 6250 graphics with 80 stream processors clocked at 276MHz. Strapped to the single-channel memory controller is 4GB of DDR3, which should be more than enough for what the WindPad is intended for.
The rest of the 110W is no slouch either, with a 32GB SSD integrated, 802.11b/g/n networking, and Bluetooth 3.0 support. The 10" screen is an IPS panel with a 1280x800 resolution. External connectivity is handled by a mini-HDMI port, an SD card reader, and a single USB 2.0 port. If there's one place where the WindPad falters compared to other tablets, though, it's the integrated cameras: both the front-facing and rear-facing cameras are only 1.3 megapixel, miles behind the rest of the pack.
MSI ships it with a two-cell, 4200mAh battery, a Trusted Platform Module, and personalized software for ease of use with touch control. That's important since Windows 7's touch-based controls still leave something to be desired. At 1.87 lbs. it's not too heavy but will definitely be noticeable.
Presales are starting now at Newegg and Amazon, for a reasonable MSRP of $599.
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Justin Case - Friday, July 8, 2011 - link
The artifacting is caused by the crappy scaler on the iPad. This tablet has a real GPU. Open a movie on a system with a UVD Radeon GPU, scale the window to 1280 pixels, and you'll see the scaling is fine.There's no real benefit to having 1920x1080 on such a small screen; if your eyes are far enough to focus, they'll be too far to make out the individual pixels, and vice-versa. Increasing the resolution will only make text and icons smaller (and many applications don't let your resize their font).
jwcalla - Thursday, July 7, 2011 - link
They need Windows 8 on that thing because that interface looks very difficult to deal with.Also I dunno about x86 on tablets.
Visual - Friday, July 8, 2011 - link
Windows 7 is great for tablets, all the articles that say it's not are just written by retards repeating what they hear without ever trying it for themselves.And if you "dunno about x86 on tablets", shut up and just stick with an oversized phone that can't even make calls instead. For some people, running real programs is important.
GaMEChld - Friday, July 8, 2011 - link
Indeed, I'd only get an x86 tablet if I was getting one at all. Still don't think I need one. My next portable device will either be a netbook or tablet, but I think smooth 1080p playback and 1080p native resolution will be what I'll be looking for. Not just because I would use those things, but being able to handle video smoothly will probably automatically mean it has the minimum hardware requirements to not be crappy in general.Perhaps I'll grab a tablet later on based on AMD Khrishna running Windows 8.
jwcalla - Friday, July 8, 2011 - link
Well I was going by the photo in the article. It could be that they just superimposed a Win7 desktop onto that tablet, but if that's what it really looks like, it doesn't seem very good at all unless you have a mouse going. The system tray / notification area would be pretty much impossible to deal with using a finger alone. Of course, Microsoft appears to agree since Windows 8 will have a more tablet-oriented customization. Oh and run on ARM too.Finraziel - Sunday, July 10, 2011 - link
That doesn't mean MS agrees, it means MS thinks windows 8 will sell better if they do this. If enough people are convinced that x86 is crap and you need a dumbed down interface on a tablet to be able to use it, it doesn't matter if it's not true because you wont sell your x86 full featured interface system.ludikraut - Monday, July 11, 2011 - link
x86 tablets/slates work just fine. I've been using an ASUS EP-121 for the past 4 months with no interface issues whatsoever; and guess what ... flash works and no mysterious iPad reboots. It would be great to see a review put the MSI head-to-head with the ASUS to see if it really is a good lower cost alternative to the EP-121. I will definitely say that having now used Win7 on a slate for a while, there's no way I could go back to the limited functionality of an iPad or Android based tablet.l8r)
GaMEChld - Friday, July 8, 2011 - link
Lol, you know, just for kicks I visited this idiots site. Terrible. Some stupid store hosted on the world's slowest server with crap web design. Diaf Captain Spamhole.ProDigit - Friday, July 8, 2011 - link
Probably 3 to 4 hours operating, 8 standby in battery life?Mugur - Friday, July 8, 2011 - link
I'd say more like 5-6h of heavy browsing on wifi...