MSI 14" Laptop, 250GB, 2GB, Celeron, $340 +tax for some at Frys online

This is hot. This isn't "just a celeron", it's a 1.8Ghz Penryn Dual-Core. 90% of people wouldn't notice the difference between this and even a T6600.

Also forgot to mention, smaller form factor lappies running full power mobile cpus tend to run hotter (you can really feel the heat on them, top & bottom, and exhausting). However, this little beauty barely even gets lukewarm and is cool to the touch virtually everywhere. Before this I considered the new 13.3" HP DM3 because it was definitely slim, light & pretty. But what killed it for me is the HP was hot from top to bottom and out the side, all that heat building up quickly inside the smaller chassis. For $150-$200 less (based on sale prices) this MSI has a little larger screen and thickness (which no doubt ventilates better), an DVD drive, seems quieter than the HP, and was only about a 3/4 of a pound more (specs say "less than 5 lbs").

daveyd said: Anyone have any experience with MSI laptops? Seems hard to go wrong at this price.

this is a hot deal! msi is based in Taiwan just like Acer and Asus. Yeah it's a great bargain.

quickfingerz said: This is hot. This isn't "just a celeron", it's a 1.8Ghz Penryn Dual-Core. 90% of people wouldn't notice the difference between this and even a T6600.

If this is really a dual core, then it's a super deal. However, I've used the T4200 and P7350 and I'll tell you that you'll notice the difference once you use it long enough. However, for all pratical purposes, $350 for a laptop is freaken awesome. If I had some extra money, I would buy one for my brother. Maybe black friday.

From the MSI link this has an NVIDIA chipset. Much better for those dual booting Linux. Good deal. And weighs 2 kilos, 4.4 lbs.

I bought the A4000 model with Pentium dual core on Monday. The unit had two problems:
- it doesn't see available wireless access points (I tried both at home and at work)
- when on AC power and connected either through KVM switch or directly to my 24" LCD, the image on the lcd flickers a lot. my LCD does not flicker if this laptop is running on battery.

I exchanged it for this A4000 model with the celeron dual today. This unit has the exact same two problems.

Has anyone else seen these problems?

Thank you cherrywood. This is stupid that wifi and webcam are by default disabled.

So to recap:

before you use wifi for the first time, hit Function+F8, then hit Function+F10

before you use webcam for the first time, hit Function+F6

How much difference does the celeron processor make in this one vs the pentium in http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/hot-deals/961852/ posted last week?

I would have gotten it If I had known, but now its $480.

Should I jump on this as a replacement for my dying turion 1.6 single core, or Should I try and keep it on life support and hold out till black friday.

I am looking at a portable with no larger than a 14 inch screen. I would try and save up for a macbook pro 13" but I don't think my curent laptop will make it that long. But it hasn't died yet, so who knows.

I did go and look at this laptop, and it looked pretty nice, the expresscard, and hdmi slots both looked plugged, but I didnt dig aroud too much on them. it had a windows experience index of 3.5, and it is a dual core celeron. with a dvd drive, the keyboard flexed a bit while typing, and it seemed to have the same kb from a, 11 or 12 inch netbook also offered from msi only it was 400. Screen looked nice too.

I just didn't want to get it and then something better be offered on BF, or the other one with the pentium dual core go back on sale. they still had quite a few of them, as well.

A couple of other points:

I don't particularly like the keyboard, not because of flex, but because of little space between the keys, makes it hard to keep my fingers in the correct places while touch typing, though some think this is an advantage.
The touchpad doesn't have any controls, annoying.
Weight is 4.7#. VERY nice.
It runs very cool, almost no heat at all sitting in my lap.
Quiet, don't hear the HD or DVD drive clunking around, or the fan buzzing.
I don't like the glossy screen or the 16:9 aspect ratio, but all laptops these days have that. I mostly do work, not look at movies, and the squashed screen makes it harder to see a real page of information, and the glossy screens cause more reflections.

EXACTLY the last time I did that was to get a wii, and the next year I passed
the reason I asked is last year I actually saw several deals before BF that were actually better, than what were offered during the madness.

do you think that the celeron is worth it?
I have been trying to track down info on both processors (as well as trying to decipher the difference between then and the core 2's)

Should I take the plunge now, or hope something better comes between now and BF.

I just want to get the most bang out of my buck as possible, as I am disabled.
I had hoped to give my current laptop to my daughter, but the way it is acting I am beginning to wonder if it will even be possible.
I have ordered a pcmcia usb adapter to hopefully fix my usb issues, but it is a 4 year old laptop.

oh one other thing I noticed the in store units were win 7, 32 bit, is this a goof on the store or is the laptop 64 bit capable, also do you have any idea on Ram, and expansion, If I upgrade the ram will I have to buy 4 gigs or just 2.

oh and any suggestions on the Fry's extended waranty?

I have Adobe creative suite 2 that I hopefully can run in xp mode, and while I am wanting to get out of the whole malware, antivirus thing, this sounds pretty good, at the 1/3rd price

oh and the keyboard is definitely borrowed from http://www.frys.com/product/6038968?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG
several of the keys were smaller than normal noticeably the enter and shift keys

I am seriously considering it. I am just unsure if this is roughly equivalent to a core 2. I need a good replacement to last me a few years.

oh yeah I forgot

does it come with an actual restore dvd?

or is it one of those with a recovery partition?

Back in stock for store pickup!

Now that I've had this a couple of weeks I find two other slight problems:

1. Webcam arcsoft driver auto adjustment is TERRIBLE. I start off looking ok, and after about 20 seconds gradually turn deep blue. Manual adjustments override that, but are VERY difficult to use compared to other webcam software. There is no update for this so far, hopefully one will come soon.

2. Touchpad will occasionally jump over a section of a page when moving the cursor, this is not a hardware issue, possibly a Win 7 issue. When I move the cursor on a blank screen it always works fine.

Both of these problems occur on my Cereron version and my Penditum version.

Go the MSI Global website, update chipset drivers to ver 15.50 for CR400 notebook (its the same model as the A4000) to resolve DVD burning problem. There is also a ODD firmware update, but I haven't tried that.

Bumping this thread for more opinions on MSI laptops. Any problems or complaints after you guys have had more time with it?
Thanks!

I'm having problems with screen flicker. Not just at start up but during normal use as well. It also seems to flicker or blink when I move the monitor back and forth. If anyone has an ideas please respond. I called the MSI tech center and I was told it was normal, come on. It's not a screen refresh rate issue, it gets fuzzy and blinks with lines really quickly and it's really sporadic.