Small notebook shootout - part III
Author: Vedran Dakic
Date: 08 Apr 2008

If you've been following the market trends in the past year, maybe you've noticed that MSI became a very serious player on that market as well. Very well-known MBO/VGA manufacturer decided to move in that direction and so far - it seems that they pulled it off. As a representative of their YA line of notebooks,I had a chance to test the PR200, a 12.1" notebook with unique green color MSI calls Wasabi Green. Strange name, but what's even more important - how does this laptop compare to already tested ASUS's F9Dc and U6s?

This line actually has three different colours - Denim Blue, Coral Pink and afforementioned Wasabi Green. In general, YA line is ment for those design/style-aware people who'd like to have something different and unique and always stand out from the crowd. Kind of like people with iPhone, iPod Touch or something like that. Now that we've covered the basics, let's get down to business.

This notebook actually has Intel's Core 2 Duo T5250 CPU inside, a 65nm 1.5GHz/667MHz FSB CPU with 2MB of L2 cache memory. As such, it's actually expected that it doesn't perform as fast as ASUS's U6s that was tested a couple of days ago (it has Intel Core 2 Duo T7500, 2.2GHz with 4MB cache CPU). In terms of VGA, MSI's baby sticks to the basics, with Intel's GMA X3100 graphics. The usual things are still there - 2GB of memory, 160GB HDD, DVD+/-RW, multi card reader - all nicely packaged in a 1.8kg package. I have to admit that I'm no fan of a green colour so take this one with a grain of salt - but the coloring and color quality is actually very good. There's a solution for that "problem", though - it's called Denim Blue or Coral Pink. So - to each one his own.

You might get the impression that I mind the fact that this notebook is somewhat "slimmed-down" in terms of hardware, and if you are - you're completely wrong. The basic idea with notebooks that are this small is to be power-independent as long as possible while compromising your speed for long battery life and bringing less pain to your shoulders. If you've ever carried around a 17" notebook, you can surely relate...