The Megabook S250 is a different kind of portable than my usual Dell. You may have seen this black Megabook S270 on the pages of HEXUS recently. The S270 is powered by an Athlon 64 or Turion processor and features a 12-inch widescreen LCD in a tiny chassis, making it one of the smallest 64-bit laptops you can buy at the time of writing.
The S250 has the same chassis, but with a Pentium-M under the hood, this time in white. The S260 is the same PM notebook, just in black.
From what I can tell, the chassis is aluminum; it’s lightweight, cool to the touch, and definitely not plastic. Lifting the lid, secured with a nice spring clip, reveals a tiny notebook, but not so small that it would be too small to use for long periods of time. I’ve used the likes of Toshiba Librettos in the past, with screens under 12 inches and keyboards so small you wouldn’t dare type on them for long periods of time, but the Megabook S250 is no such beast.
The keyboard retains decent-sized keys, with only the Enter and Backspace keys being smaller than I’d like. It places the Fn function-key modifier key a little too close to the Control key on the bottom left, but that’s a quirk of all recent laptops that I’ve learned to tolerate. I usually hit Fn when I extend my pinky to press the Control key, but I don’t blame myself when I do that these days. At least, not in front of the kind lady at the visa office who’s currently processing my application.
The function keys on the front edge of the keyboard are the only ones that really sacrifice size for space, but unless you remap them to alphanumeric keys, you won’t get annoyed. Using a US keyboard layout, which I then remapped to a UK layout, I could only type the backslash character using the character map, but that’s the only character I use regularly that I can’t type without help. Of course, if you buy a UK-localized model, you won’t have the same problem. The keyboard itself is a great typing experience, even for long typing sessions, although the keys are noisy and the left side of the keyboard doesn’t seem as firmly fixed to the chassis as the right side.
Above the front edge of the keyboard is a very Mac-esque power button surrounded by a white LED light to indicate device power. Four fixed function keys, two on each side, provide quick access to the default mail, web browser (the button is adorned with an Internet Explorer “E,” which is really offensive), and file search, and the fourth function key activates and deactivates the radio for WiFi functionality.
The touchpad is smaller than I usually like and is very sensitive to accidentally brushing your finger lightly across its surface, but it’s impressively precise, and I didn’t hate using it, as I do with Dell computers. The mouse buttons are small, but still easy to press, and even on their front edge, I can press them with just the edge of my thumb. This fits the way I like to use a laptop, as I rest my hands on the keyboard and wrist rest, which I can’t do with other laptops I’ve used recently, and to some extent, my Dell computer.
There’s plenty of room on either side of the touchpad to rest your wrists or palms, and the chassis only gets warm from body heat, not from the mechanical heat generated by the device. A set of status LEDs sit between the lid’s ports, and the light they emit is very diffuse, a nice change from the ultra-bright LEDs that mar many consumer electronics.
The screen measures 12 inches diagonally, has a resolution of 1280×800 pixels, and is too reflective for my taste. As I sat in the embassy and the sun shone through the thick curtains onto the ornate barred windows, I could easily see my ugly face on the screen, which I really hated. Screens of this type are usually very bright – this one is – and have high contrast – this one isn’t great – but if I were buying this Megabook with my own money, I wouldn’t sacrifice it for reflectivity. With a good viewing angle range, I could tilt the screen toward me and minimize the impact without too much of a drop in visibility, but brightness dropped, and the device’s screen light seemed to shine only when you were looking straight at it. Still,
It’s a perfect resolution for this screen size, and I enjoyed browsing the web and writing with plenty of pixel headroom. I wish my 20-inch LCD at home had this pixel-per-inch ratio. For this reviewer, 12-inch laptops are king in terms of screen size and, generally, pixel real estate.
Unlike most laptops, the rear edge of the device is devoid of a bank of ports. That space is where the removableMegabook laptops battery of the Megabook S250, S260, and AMD-powered S270 resides. As such, ports are spread out along the sides and front. The left side has room for a DVD burner tray, an integrated media reader slot (which accepts SD, MMC, and MemoryStick), a USB 2.0 port, and a PC Card slot. The front has microphone and headphone and non-powered FireWire 400 ports, while the right side has a pair of USB 2.0, 100 Mibit/sec Ethernet and modem ports, VGA out, and a port to plug in a micro power adapter.
Due to its large size, the S250 has relatively few connection options, but the ones that are provided cover just about every base you’d want to access.
Software-wise, MSI pre-installs the laptop with Windows XP Home, some Cyberlink software (for watching and creating DVDs), and Norton AV and Internet Security. I’m not sure if this represents the retail package, but I’d imagine it’s close. 1.5GHz
The Pentium-M is paired with 512MiB of memory, of which the integrated SiS M661MX graphics chip steals 32MiB for its own use. Driving a 2D framebuffer at 1280×800 is a bit overkill, and while it has basic 3D capabilities, it wouldn’t hurt for the graphics chip to utilize half the memory. Toshiba’s 60GB (about 53GiB) MK6021GAS 2.5-inch hard drive takes care of storage. BTW, I have this drive and a few others ready for a drive roundup, so keep an eye out for them after Computex is over. Slimtype
The SOSW-852S is the S250’s optical drive, which allows you to burn CDs and DVDs using the included Cyberlink software. It would be rude not to find SiS 802.11g WiFi networking hardware in the S250, and connectivity is very important in the laptop world these days. It currently finds the Netgear access point at the Chinese Embassy and has no problem connecting to the Belkin hardware at my home, at 54g speeds. Notably, it supports WPA encryption, a networking standard that far replaces WEP, to keep your communications and your home network secure.
All this hardware combines to give me about 2 hours of battery life on the first few charges after receiving the machine, with WiFi enabled,
MSI Megabook S250 Battery
Life was about 2 hours, although the first run through the battery after the first charge showed closer to an hour of battery life. A few quirks on first use aside, it seemed to be able to get me through a few episodes of Stargate: Atlantis or a full DVD movie on a single charge on a flight to Taipei. Pretty good.
It comes with a custom carrying case that easily fits the S250, its small power adapter, and much larger power cord, with room to spare for a few DVDs I need to bring, a few discs of movies and TV shows I keep saved, and some of the usual peripherals like pens and a small paper notebook. Even with all that stuff loaded up, I barely felt the weight on my shoulders, which bodes well for the all-important Computex event in two weeks.
While I prefer the black S260 to the iBook-like white S250, the hardware performance is more than adequate for my use in Taiwan, leaving me with no desire for the sexier, more powerful S270.
To sum up this mini wonder from MSI, it’s absolutely the right size for my purposes, far better than the awful DTR models I reviewed for HEXUS. Ample disk space and stable WiFi, along with excellent basic ergonomics, let me put aside the reflective nature of the screen while enjoying the size and lightness of a laptop that’s almost perfect for my needs. I’m a journalist, and I don’t need 3D performance on the go. I just write, so all I need is a small, high-resolution, wireless keyboard that I can type away at for hours on end.
Thankfully, the S250 fits the bill perfectly. I can tell they’ll have a hard time getting it from MSI when I get back. At around £700 including VAT and shipping from a few UK locations, the S260 or S270 would be my first choice if I had a reason to not take advantage of the perks of being a tech journalist and buy my own hardware. The Sony S3XP is my top choice right now, with its slightly larger 13.3-inch screen and the same resolution, but the MSI is a close second.
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