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It what either is a great display of high hopes, market distraction or pitiful hubris, PC World is reporting that an MSI representative has announced that the Wind desktop first discussed back at Computex is actually going to be released in Europe and Asia in…wait for it…July. Seeing as how the Wind laptop version has already seen two release dates come and go and may or may not hit shelves July 7th, I wonder if the MSI flak kept a straight face during his announcement. I bet somebody in the back at least giggled some. Of course, as this is a desktop unit and not a laptop, perhaps the lack of a battery may mean it will actually arrive before it’s UMPC cousin. Also, as a OEM company specializing in motherboards perhaps a desktop is more in MSI’s execution comfort zone.

Running the same Atom CPU as the laptop, the desktop Wind has fairly pedestrian specs. RAM will start at 1G and be upgradable to 2G, a standard HHD will be onboard as will be a DVD and WiFi. I am dubious if the Atom in a desktop will have enough power to run high end graphics programs or multitask very well, but as a light duty PC it could serve nicely.

The most interesting part of these devices is in the power consumption, burning only 35 watts running at full speed, as opposed to the normal 250 watts. The barebones version price point of 199 US is also a major advantage, undercutting the Asus Eee Box by a hundred dollars, much as the laptop versions are cheaper then their Eee counterparts.

Of course, an unreleased bargain is still just that…unreleased. We will see if the desktop version has any more luck then the laptop in getting out to the public on time.

Nothing on their website about the product yet, which apparently will not be released at all in the US. Time will tell.

Zealot (444 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

By day a department manager and writer for a major network device vendor...by night Zealot stalks the mean magnetic streets, striking fear into the hearts of bandwidth abusers and theme park mascots. Zealot has been involved with mobile devices for more than a decade now, starting off with dumb phones, moving to PDAs and then to smartphones, notebooks and netbooks with the odd PMP thrown in. Most of his mobile time currently is spent on a Treo Pro, Zune HD, Thinkpad T61, Gigabyte M912M or a Hackintoshed Compaq Mini 704. He proudly groks the Geek community and considers himself a Neo Maxi Zune Dweebie (thanks Will Wheaton!).