Wind U200
From FrugalWiki
Dansk – Deutsch – English – Español – Français – Indonesia – Italiano – Lietuviškai – Magyar – Nederlands – Polski – Português – Română – Slovenský – Suomi – Svenska – Türkçe – Česky – Ελληνικά – Български – Русский – Српски – Українська – עברית – ไทย – 日本語 – 正體中文 – 简体中文 – 한국어
Contents |
Wind U200
Hardware
Processor: Intel® Penryn SFF ULV Processor 723 / SU3500
Chipset: GS45 + ICH9M-SFFLCD12.1” 1366*768 HD Ready
VGA Controller: GMA 4500 MHDV
RAM: share with system memory
Memory Type: DDR2 667/800Mhz,Config DDR2 SO-DIMM x 2 slot, Maximum4GB
Audio: Speaker
Webcam: 1.3 M Webcam
Communication: LAN10/100/1000, Bluetooth, Optional, Wireless LAN802.11 b/g/n
I / O:
- Card reader4 in 1 (support SD,MMC,MS,XD)
- Mic-in / Headphone out: 1 / 1
- USB 2.0: 3
- RJ45: 1
- D-Sub: 1
- HDMI: 1
Storage:
- HDD form factor: 2.5“ 160/250 /320GB SATA
- Optical Drive external
Battery: 3/6/9 Cells
Keyboard: 87 keys
Power: AC Adapter, 40W
Physical Characteristics
- Dimension: 297x 190 x 24.5~31mm
- Full System Weight: 1.3kg (With 3 Cell Battery)
Personal review(s)
Phayz
- General comments
I like the overall look and feel of the laptop. Although it's glossy black on the outside, I don't seem to be leaving fingerprints on it. This may be due to the fact that I have left the protective sticker on the lid. Inside, those parts which come into contact with my grubby fingers and hands are the keys and the area beside the trackpad. The keys are a matte black and so don't show fingerprints. The area beside the trackpad is a glossy gray and, while you can see fingerprints, they're not blindingly obvious because they're on a gray background. At the very front of the laptop's base is a series of LEDs which glow a lovely blue and have matching icons which hint at their function. It's very quiet and since I am used to using a noisy PC at home, it's just great to sit in silence *AND* have the PC on. I have found it so nice to use and powerful (compared to my desktop PC) that I use it as a desktop replacement whenever I am at home.
- Size
Its size is great, because it sits comfortably on my lap when I'm on the train, traveling to and from work. However it's not too big that to use the keyboard requires nudging those beside me with my elbows.
- Weight
It weighs about 1.4 kg and I can comfortably carry that together with my other gear. I'm very slight, so anyone larger and stronger probably wouldn't even notice the extra weight.
- Screen
Although the screen is glossy, I haven't had any trouble reading it with sunlight on it, since the screen's brightness can be easily adjusted. The screen's edge is beveled on the inside and because there's no catch on the lid, you insert your thumb in the gap to get the screen into position. On other laptops I have found that this leaves fingerprints at the top of the screen, which I find annoying, but the bevel means your thumb rests on the plastic beveled edge, not the edge of the glossy screen. The screen's hinges don't allow the screen to be tilted back quite as far as I would like. In some situations on the train I would like to tilt the screen back a little more, but it's just not possible. This is disappointing but certainly a minor point. The screen's maximum resolution is 1366x768 and I love it. This is the first PC or laptop screen I have used which has this resolution and it looks great. Of course I now need to find wide-screen versions of wallpapers but this has not been a problem so far.
- Keyboard
I really like the feel of the keys and I really do tend to be picky about keyboards. It has a nice "feel", keys of either "standard" size or almost standard zie with very little noise and requires only a light touch on the keys. The layout is quite standard and includes dedicated Home, End, Page Up and Page Down keys. I am still getting used to the layout so am not yet proficient as I would like to be. The keyboard has the usual Function (Fn) key, with which to activate functions such as 'Mute audio', 'Unmute audio' etc. but I haven't yet got these working under Frugalware. They're just not important to me at the moment so I haven't even tried.
- Touchpad
The touchpad has been designed nicely, with separate left and right buttons. When I was shopping around I found that I didn't like the single bar-style touchpad buttons. The touchpad is a slightly indented area, with rounded cornets and rounded edges to the indent. All this means that you can be sure that your finger is on the touchpad, because it has a slightly different texture than the surrounding area. If your finger moves to the edge of the touchpad you know it, but there are no hard, "sharp" edged to the touchpad so it's very easy on the finger. It seems that it doesn't have any scrolling capability, which is annoying but outside my control. I wanted separate left and right buttons and although I got them, they are a little stiff to press and not as light as all other keys. As far as I can tell, this touchpad does not offer any scrolling capability.
- Input/output
It has many input and output options. Input includes USB and SD for storage. For audio input there is a standard input jack. Output includes VGA and HDMI. I have already used the HDMI port to connect the laptop to my 42 inch Sony HD TV and it works well.
- Network connectivity
Both wired and wireless support is available. Wired is via a 10/100 GB Ethernet port, which I have tested and works as expected. Wireless support is via an RALink wireless chipset which I also have working well. I did have problems with wireless at first because the driver was looking for a firmware file which didn't exist. I created a symlink to the file it was trying to load and since then wireless has been working well.
- Overall performance
I've been very happy with the laptop's performance. It out-performs my desktop PC but since it's more than 8 years old, that's really not at all hard. It has an Intel Core 2 Solo CPU which, by whatever means, presents 2 CPUs to the OS. I don't know if this is via hyperthreading because I'm just not interested in how it works. I was honestly expecting just 1 core so this is a pleasant surprise. In playing back full HD multimedia there is no problem at all.
- Battery life
I'm very happy with this because what I get what was advertised and what reviews have told me I ought to expect. I get about 4.5 hours life out of the battery in continuous use and that's certainly adequate for what I use it for. Of course you can get even better battery life but I believe I had to compromise because a 10 inch display will (I believe) draw less power than a 12.1 inch display.
Frugalware community members who own or have used this laptop
Known Problems
With some Linux kernels the correct wireless module may not be loaded, because of a conflict with other kernel modules. The behaviour when this occurs is that the wireless port (wlan0) is detected and visible but a scan of wireless networks fails. A solution to this is to add the following lines to the /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf file. This will prevent the conflicting kernel modules from being automatically loaded and from the very next reboot, wireless should work.
blacklist rt2800pci blacklist rt2800lib blacklist rt2x00pci blacklist rt2x00lib