MSI Wind: Lay your hands on me at Best Buy

Try before you buy, and make sure the MSI Wind's tiny keyboard isn't too tiny.

The MSI Wind is hitting retail store shelves. That's good news if, like me, you'd like to see just how cramped a Netbook's keyboard is before your fat fingers pull the trigger on a purchase. MSI today announced that its 10-inch Netbook, available only online from Amazon and other direct sellers until now, is on store shelves at Best Buy.

The MSI Wind U100 model at Best Buy looks very similar to the $479 model we reviewed earlier this year, featuring the 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 processor, 1GB of memory, and Windows XP Home, but it trades the 80GB hard drive for a larger 120GB drive and trims $80 off the price in the process, coming in at $399. Unfortunately, it features the puny 3-cell battery that underwhelmed us in testing, lasting less than 2 hours on CNET Labs' battery drain test, instead of a bigger six-cell battery that MSI has started to offer on some models. MSI will place only one configuration in Best Buy, at least initially, but you will have your choice of color: black or white.