MSI Wind

I bought this pearlescent white beauty off SITEX last Sept which makes it slightly than a year old. Then on, i have made quite a few tweaks here and then, To rattle off slightly on the software aspect,

1. i have skinned the native XP Home OS to look like OSX 1.4.11 (normal human speak, Tiger)
2. Ran Services.msc to kill useless system and program processes for all of eternity (DISABLED)
3. Uninstalled all bloatware that shipped with my computer,
4. Mucked around in Bootlog.bat to make the puny Intel Atom to chug at max throttle during bootup and removed the option to display multiboot options (i am not running multiple partitions with standalone OS so for fish i keep this option enabled?)
5. Installed Ramback in FF and tweaked in About:config to reduce memory usage when minimised and throttle memory usage in FF.
6. Installed FreeRAM XP Pro to counter memory leakage
7. Keep all drivers and firmware updated asap.
8. Enabled one touch overclocking. Basically i jacked up the FSB of the Atom by 15% which makes it running at roughly 620MHz. Also the operating frequency of the Atom has been raised to a new ceiling of 1.84GHz. This has enabled the N270 to achieve performance which is comparable to its newer sibling the N280.

Two things however that count among the grouses i have is the tinny sounds the netbook's bundled speakers produce. They are crappy like some neolithic tin can noise. Ewww, the crackling static jarrs on my ears like chalk scraping the side of a black chalkboard. Get that?

The other grouse is the touchpad. Okay, they are pretty decent. But i am pretty cheesed that MSI chose to bundle the cheapo Sentelic touchpad instead of the more standard Synaptic touchpad. Because Synaptic patented the invention of drag to scroll on the sides of the touchpad, Sentelic had to make do with tap to scroll. A perfect recipe for disaster. Add a dumb driver which isn't written to adequately differentiate an user's intent to click or to scroll, the result is spectacular. In the beginning, i found the cursor as searchable as the Snitch. Perfect cure for boredom... As a result,
i had to disable tap to click which effectively kill tap to click as well. Bummer

Solutions!

thanks to fellow users of the Wind, i think it is possible to ship in by mail a replacement Synaptic touchpad that costs around USD12. While i am contemplating the feasibility and rationale of this move, i decided to act on the tin cans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaker_enclosure
Basically the speaker cones that shipped with the Wind lacked proper enclosures. Enclosures are like boxy structures which house the cones so that out of phase sound waves can be absorbed by the enclosure material rather than interfere destructively. When you interfere
destructively, you cause a dramatic decrease in speaker power i.e. broadcast strength. Also, lotsa nasty sounds ensue which annoy you to no end. Hence i created my own enclosures to resolve the problem for good.

A little less conversation, a little more action please.

 

The tools i used:
1. Bit saw
2. Teflon tape
3. Philips screwdriver
4. Cloth tape

I removed all nine screws and then i realised that i didn't have to shift away the Ralink RT2700E
Wireless Card. Whew!

You can see the WD 160GB Scorpio HDD very clearly. Btw, it is possible to enable AHCI mode for your SATA HDD. You can also spot the 1GB RAM module with the blue stick somewhere in centre. The i945GV chipset which requires no heatsink and of course the farnee exhaust fan at the top right hand corner.

This is the original housing where the speaker cone sat i.e. the right one. As you can observe, there is hardly any resemblance of an enclosure hence the tin can noises. I used the caps of spray nozzles as my enclosures. I took both from body shop hair serum bottles and i had helluva time sawing the bottle caps till they came down to roughly 0.35" to 0.22" in height. I ran the teflon tape around the circumference of the cones so they will sit snugly in their new homes. The results were quite mindblowing in my opinion.

You can spot the two new speakers, snugly housed in their enclosures at the bottom left and right corners respectively. The whitish inserts are the coils of teflon tapes which i used to wrap around the cones so they can sit in the enclosures as tight as possible. This is very important because you would want the enclosures to be as air tight as possible. If not the point of having airtight enclosures will be defeated. Below are two pictures of the two enclosures up close and personal.

The left speaker/enclosure

The right speaker/enclosure

Overall i rate the mod a success, 7 out of 10. The bass has improved by leaps and bounds considering that it was non-existent in stock condition :/ Also treble has improved, resulting in a richer and fuller sound. Certainly more pleasing if you ask me. Loudness has also been jacked up by a factor of i reckon 4 times. I can now hear iTunes play in the kitchen whereas it was near to being inaudible in the living room. Furthermore, crackling noises are almost eliminated at normal hearing ranges. :D