I've been eying these little UMPC's for a while especially based on @jerrytaft's experience with them so far. The big difference here is I wanted to start with Ubuntu and then add Mac OS X later.
The unit I selected was the MSI Wind U100. I bought it at Micro Center for $474.06. I wanted the model with the larger hard drive and better battery life. I'm not sure why, I doubt I'll ever use this thing for anything serious - just thought it made more sense.
It's actually pretty feature rich computer as far as I'm concerned. It includes (among other things):
- Webcam
- WiFi Card (this was a bit of a challenege in Ubuntu)
- External Monitor Port
- 3 USB Ports
- SD Card Reader
Those are jut the features that stood out for me. It's also a pretty fast machine considering it's size. It comes pre-installed with XP Home - which I was interested in playing with a little because I've been so steeped in Macs for so long, I've lost touch with Windows completely. This means I wanted to be able to dual boot.
I immediately discovered this forum. It's a great step by step how to for Ubuntu on an MSI Wind. I decided to use Wubi because it meant I could maintain my Windows install. Make sure you follow the steps exactly - I skipped one and had some minor issues.
The biggest problem I had was the WiFi card.
All of the instructions I could find were for the Realtek RTL8187SE card. First thing to know: not all MSI Wind UMPC's use this card. I got one that doesn't. Mine uses a Ralink RT2700E. I only reaized this after finding this forum page and following the debug instructions on the bottom of the page.
Once I discovered that I had the Ralink card the process got a lot easier. I found this forum page that had drivers and directions for the RT2860 which work just fine with the RT2700E. I've used it on a couple of different security protocols and had a lot of success. The card itself behaves very well in Ubuntu - Windows on the other hand, it's very slow and appears to have an intermitent connectionn. Full disclosure - I haven't really tried to solve the issue so it may be an easy fix.
Overall this was a really easy process - however - you need to be comfortable using the terminal.
As my friend Eric pointed out "If you fuck it up, and you will, you just start over again until you get it right."
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