MSI Megabook S271: a Look at AMD's Turion X2

General Use

So we got everything hammered out in terms of stability problems, we finally got a chance to sit down and used a laptop without having to worry about it crashing randomly. How does the laptop perform, but aspects do we like or dislike, and what should potential buyers know before making a purchase decision? Our biggest complaint is one that is very personal, so where is we didn't like this aspect of the system other people might not have any problems. We're talking about the keyboard.

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There's really not much you can do with an ultraportable laptop to address the situation, but many of us still find to keyboards to be too small and cramped. Long periods of typing became extremely tedious, and it was very easy to accidentally bump the trackpad. Other than the size, though, we really don't have too many complaints about the keyboard layout. All of the most useful keys are readily available, while the function key in the bottom left provides access to some additional keys. The trackpad is pretty typical as far as such items go, with all of the standard features like edge dragging, scrollbar support, corner functions, etc. available for configuration with the utility application. A lot of people dislike trackpads, and again the inclusion of a small mouse was definitely a nice bonus.

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The only other feature that we really need to discuss is the display. At maximum brightness, it was fine for use indoors or for watching movies on an airplane. It does however feature a glossy coating that is supposed to enhance the color saturation and make the image look more vivid, and it seems to produce nice colors in typical lighting. However, the glossy coating tends to reflect surroundings in brighter environments, and using the laptop outdoors was difficult -- though we would say the same of nearly every laptop we have used. Response time of the display was never an issue whether we were watching movies or running other applications. Perhaps it might be an issue with some faster paced games, but you're not going to be playing those on the system anyway.

Warranty

With all of the problems we described relating to memory compatibility, one of the questions that is certain to come up is what sort of warranty you get with the MSI S271 laptop. MSI sells the laptop in two versions, the S271 and the MS-1058. The S271 is a complete system and it's supported directly by MSI. It comes with a one-year manufacturer warranty, including technical support, with prices starting at around $1000. You can also purchase the chassis as a barebones whitebook system (sometimes with a manufacturer other than MSI listed) and add your own components, and you can also locate resellers that allow you to custom configure your own laptop. The whitebook is model MS-1058, and it carries no warranty other than from the reseller. Prices start at around $700 for the barebones model.

So which would be better, the S271 or the MS-1058? The answer depends on a few factors, with price certainly being one of them. The standard configuration of the S271 really isn't very impressive, particularly in the memory department. As you can already tell from reading the previous page, purchasing the system with the intent to add your own memory later also has drawbacks, but you should be able to avoid memory issues with the advice we've provided. Those who are interested in getting a higher spec version of the notebook will probably be best off getting the bare-bones MS-1058 and adding their own parts, or going through another system integrator. Before you decide whether or not you want one of these notebooks, however, perhaps we ought to get to the testing and see what sort of performance you get.

Test Setup

For comparison, we have an ASUS A8JS that includes a Core 2 Duo T7200 processor (2.0GHz with 4MB of shared L2 cache). We were hoping to have something more directly comparable to the MSI S271, but unfortunately this was the best we could do for this article. In most areas, the ASUS laptop has better specifications, and it also has a higher base price of roughly $1600 compared to $1000. To provide a more fair comparison, we equipped the S271 with 2GB of memory and a TL-60 Turion X2 processor (2.0 GHz, 2x512K cache), and given the similarity in clock speeds between the AMD Turion X2 lineup and Intel's Core 2 Duo mobile offerings, looking at the two systems with equivalent clock speeds should provide a good point of reference. With the upgraded processor and memory, the MSI MS-1058 should cost close to $1400 (or you could simply get a Compaq laptop with similar performance and a 15" display for $1400).

We will be providing a full review of the ASUS A8JS later this week, so we're only including the comparative results in this article. Here are the test configurations.

MSI S271/MS-1058 Tested Configuration
Processor	AMD Turion 64 X2 processor TL-50 (1.60 GHz 2x256K L2) AMD Turion 64 X2 processor TL-60 (2.00 GHz 2x512K L2)
Chipset	ATi RS485M + SB460 chipset
Graphics	UMA ATI RS485M, 128MB VRAM (ATI Xpress 1100 chipset)
Memory	2x512MB Corsair DDR2-667 SO-DIMM 2x1024MB Corsair DDR2-667 SO-DIMM Note: RAM tested at DDR2-533 5-4-4-15 for compatibility reasons.
Display	12.1" WXGA (1280x800) widescreen TFT display
Hard Disk Drive	Toshiba 60GB 5400RPM IDE Hard Drive (MK60340GAX)
Audio	Realtek ALC 882D
Battery	Li-ion 8 cells battery (4400mAHr)
Operation System	Windows XP Professions SP2
BIOS	AMIBIOS v1.17 and beta v1.18

ASUS A8JS Tested Configuration
Processor	Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 (2.00 GHz 4MB shared L2)
Chipset	Intel 945PM Express Chipset
Graphics	NVIDIA GeForce Go 7700 512MB
Memory	2x1024MB Infineon DDR2-667 5-5-5-15 SO-DIMM
Display	14.1" WXGA+ (1440x900) widescreen display
Hard Disk Drive	Hitachi 100GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive (HTS721010G9SA00)
Audio	Realtek ALC 882D
Battery	Li-ion 8 cells battery (4400mAHr)
Operation System	Windows XP Professions SP2
BIOS	AMIBIOS v1.17 and beta v1.18

We ran our typical battery of benchmarks, including office, multimedia, 3D, and video rendering applications. One area that we didn't test very much is the gaming performance of the S271. We did run several gaming benchmarks, but after the first several tests we quickly came to the conclusion that the integrated graphics are so slow that there wasn't much point in continuing. 3D games from five or more years ago should run pretty well, but modern titles will struggle at best and fail to run at worst. If you're looking for a very small portable gaming solution, you will definitely want to look elsewhere.