MSI’s newly announced X-Slim 320 has the innards of a netbook, but with a 13.4-inch widescreen display (1366 x 768 pixels) I can’t help but wonder: is this a netbook or notebook? Netbooks typically don’t have screen sizes larger than about 10 inches, but Hewlett Packard is working with Intel currently to use the latter’s Atom chip in netbooks with laptop-like screen sizes. So I guess the X-Slim 320 could/would fit into the netbook category.
Wherever it may lie, the MSI X-Slim 320 is a thin 0.71 inches thick and weighs a reasonably light 2.87 pounds. It is rumored to used NVIDIA’s Ion chipset, a combination of Intel’s Atom chip and the GeForce 9400M mobile GPU, but with an 8-cell battery the X-Slim 320 can still run for 10 hours fully charged. There is also a 4-cell battery option. Not bad considering the differentiating factor separating Freescale Semiconductor’s i.mx515 ARM netbook chip from the ever-popular Atom is its 8 hour run time.
I should mention that the processor–or any other specs–are not officially confirmed. In fact I’ve heard that the X-Slim 320 may be using an Intel Atom Z530 processor as well.
Other specs include 3.5G WWAN, Bluetooth, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Ethernet, 2 GB of DDR2 memory, 3 USB 2.0 ports, a VGA port, and a card reader. I’m not sure if the X-Slim 320 will use an HDD, SSD, or combination like the recently announced MSI U115.
We’ll get all the specs confirmed once it rolls out at CES 2009, but the rumored price tag is between $799 and $999 American. Definitely more notebook than netbook pricing.
