At first glance, the MSI X600-031US Slim is fascinating. At 4.6 pounds with a 5400 mA battery gives the X600-031US a truly full-size keyboard (including a separate numeric keypad) and a 15.6-inch, 1366 x 768-pixel screen with an ATI Mobility Radeon 4330 powered discrete graphics chip. Overall, that sounds like a pretty great combination, right? Well, there are a few warts.

An aircraft of this great sporting Intel’s Core 2 Solo U3500 low-power processor would be one of these curiosities. This is a CPU would typically be found in an ultralight laptop, MSI X340 is like your own. And while the X600-031US is sporting a discrete graphics chip – something that certainly helps visual quality on DVDs – the actual pixel resolution is not more than those on the smaller, lighter X340.

BUY MSI X600-031US NOW AT A SPECIAL PRICE!
Performance is only what you expect for a single-core low-voltage U3500: In WorldBench 6, the X600-031USnotched a score of 62. This is actually better than the X340, but there are still traces of the Aspire Time Line, which ships with a dual-core processor.
One thing the X600-031US no more or less together with other general-purpose class machines: battery life. It takes 3 hours, 50 minutes in lab tests – about 20 minutes below the average. OK, so we have come out of the gate were two strikes. On some better news.

When running light office and web applications, the system offers very good response, given the limited CPU resources. We have started some pretty serious lag when scrolling through a large PDF file while Firefox 5.3 was opened with a dozen tabs to see run. Running standard office applications such as Word or Excel, ran well. And really, if you’re buying the X600-031US thinking, is what you’ll probably use it for, anyway are. Think of it as a netbook with privileges.
Wi-Fi performance was good for a laptop in this class. Even complex web pages load quickly, and we saw no significant problems in our environment 802.11n.

BUY MSI X600-031US NOW AT A SPECIAL PRICE!
The X600-031US offers a fairly typical set of expansion ports. It has three USB 2.0 ports, although one of them has double-duty as a combo eSATA port – very handy for connecting external hard drives with eSATA support. The memory card slot is SD cards is limited (including the higher capacity SDHC cards) and MMC cards, Sony Memory Stick not handle it. The two dedicated USB ports, the memory card slot and audio input and output jacks live on the right side of the device, while the eSATA Combo USB port, HDMI output, VGA port and Ethernet jack on the left . The back has no ports.
MSI’s software bundle, the Nero OEM software suite for burning DVDs and video playback, plus a 60-day trial version of Microsoft Office software and webcam limited. Interestingly Nero adds a dock at the bottom of the screen, reminiscent of the MacOS dock’s.

BUY MSI X600-031US NOW AT A SPECIAL PRICE!
Video performance is better than many notebooks in this class, probably because of the ATI Mobility HD 4330 GPU. DVD visual quality was excellent, although the screen itself offered limited viewing angle. We used the external USB DVD drive, part of the Serenity, Lord of the Rings to be seen: The Return of the King and the Raiders of the Lost Ark DVD upscaling looked closely, and we found no artifacts. Audio was good enough, but you are better off with a good headset. Photos also looked pretty sharp. MSI has a lean supply, external USB DVD burner, USB-powered’s – but by sliding the weight last five pounds, and the drive requires two USB ports – one for data, one for power.
At the end of the MSI X600-031US suffers from a bit of confusion of the platform. Is it an ultralight? The performance is about on par with systems in this class, though the life of the battery can not compare. Is it a thin and light? Well, it is thin, while the discrete graphics chip and with a large screen. But performance will suffer along with some other systems in its weight and price class. What does have the MSI model, because it is: an elegant form factor and full-size keyboard with number pad. If you do a lot of time typing and data entry, thereby spending, the MSI fit the bill. But we want a CPU or Hitachi in a lighter package to see. Pick one.
