The MSI Wind Top AE91900 is a direct competitor of the Asus Eee Top.  It's based on the same principle as other 'iMac-style' computers, including all of the hardware inside its 18" screen.

As it's a touchscreen, users have a choice between using the keyboard and mouse or interacting directly with the screen.

Handling & Connectivity

The MSI Wind Top is the second computer of its type to visit our lab: the Asus Eee Top came first.  Apart from the larger screen and the inclusion of a DVD writer on MSI's model, the differences aren't immediately obvious.  In both cases, we were looking at computers made from white plastic surrounded by a transparent frame.  After looking moe closely, Asus takes the prize fror better build quality, especially for its stand and the more attractive buttons that are also easier to access.

The keyboard and mouse that come with the Wind Top are both in white plastic.  Unlike the mouse, the keyboard seems reasonably decent.  Either way, both will almost certainly be replaced by anybody who makes heay use of the Wind Top.

Typical webcam shot

We weren't taken in by the webcam for two reasons: contours looked too hard and colours were too bright.  The sound quality did nothing to improve the situation.  Even when backed into a corner, neither the mic nor the speakers are good enough.

The Wind Top made a terrifying amount of noise at first.  As soon as you switch it on, the fan starts turning at full speed.  Fortunately, the sound soon drops back, even when you're performing demanidng tasks.  Although you can't forget that it's there, the DVD player is reasonably discreet.

The computer includes the following inputs and outputs: four USB ports (there are six on the Eee Top), two mini-jacks and an RJ45 portt.  What's missing?  Well, a video output to plug in a second monitor, e-SATA or FireWire ports, or even an Express Card slot ...

Buttons to adjust volume and brightness	Two USB ports, Ethernet and two mini-jacks
SD Card reader, two USB ports	Webcam

Processor Power

Wherever the Intel Atom is listed as the CPU--whether it's the N270, N280 or the N230--tasks like compressing files and editing video are going to be slow.  The main advantage of these processors, though, is that they use very little energy.  In this case, the whole computer (keyboard and mouse excepted) only required between 30 and 35 W, which is very low and close to the consumption of a good laptop.

Although we might be repeating ourselves, we'd like to stress that you can do anything with an Atom processor.  It's just that you'll need to be very patient and be happy to wait up to half an hour for very demanding processes to complete (photo editing) where a good computer would only need six minutes.  You should sitck to office use, surfing the web or watching video, as long as it's not very heavily-encoded HD content.  Blu-ray content won't work on this sort of computer because there just isn't enough processor power.

Gaming

As we said of the Eee Top, the graphics chipset just isn't up to powering the latest 3D games.  Our advice would be to fall back to slightly older games, and to prefer 2D over 3D. 

Audio

It's not like we didn't try the volume controls that are built into both the screen and the keyboard, but we had a hard job of seeing where the sound had disappeared to.  The maximum volume is very quiet, entirely unusable, and the headphone jack/line out is hardly exceptional either.  Basically, you will definitely need external speakers, and even then, you can't expect miracles.

Touchscreen

To make touchscreen interaction easier, MSI has included a simplified interface with big icons.  It's divided into four different zones: work, play, tools and webn.  This may well be the first sign of an entirely tactile way of interacting with computers, but that's still a long way off.  It's easy to tell that most applications haven't been designed to be controlled by hand.  It remains to be seen whether or not this trend will continue with the arrival of Window 7, which would be a good sign for computers like this.