I should note that there are two changes I had to make to my MSI wind to tailor it to my liking.

The first is that I wanted more memory. One gigabyte just doesn’t cut it for me these days, and two gigabytes is the low end of useful, normally. Since I’m intending to use this as a portable computer, and not an everyday computer, I don’t think I’ll be placing as much strain on it as I would on my desktop. Since the MSI Wind supports 2 gigabytes, I opted to do the upgrade. It was a relatively simple, but warranty-voiding, matter of removing several screws on the bottom of the case, and putting in a chip. If you’re not comfortable voiding your warranty, you shouldn’t do this. If you’re mildly technically competent, and willing to take the risk, it’s easy to do. Fortunately for me, I had a PC2-6400 1GB SODIMM lying around. This doesn’t exactly match the memory in the MSI Wind, but it does work, and hasn’t been problematic. The default memory is slower than that, and thought he laptop can use PC2-6400, I doubt it’s taking advantage of the faster speed.

Note that the onboard memory on the Wind is actually onboard. You don’t need to remove any memory to add new memory, you just add it. The word out there is that the Wind will only support a maximum of 2GB, so buying anything larger than a 1GB SODIMM is wasted money, I suspect. However, if anyone out there has put in a larger SODIMM and gotten more memory, I’d love to hear about it.

The other configuration change I had to make was to the WiFi network card. The default WiFi card that comes with the Wind is not supported under OSX by default. At the time that I set up my Wind, the acceptable practice was to remove the standard card, and install a 3rd party card with a chipset that is supported. The Dell DW-1390 and DW-1490 both have supported broadcom chips. At the time I was purchasing, the only difference I could find between those two cards was about $15. I got a DW-1390 off of ebay for $12. Installing the card was easy, though there was a small modification to the motherboard that needs to be made: There is a small mounting nut that is soldered onto the motherboard, which doesn’t interfere with the default card, but doesn’t quite fit with the DW-1390. It was very easy to heat the nut with a soldering iron, and pull it off. Other sites suggest that you can just wiggle it off, but I’d recommend against that, especially since you’ve just voided the warranty. Applying a soldering iron to the nut and heating it just enough to loosen the solder made pulling it off the motherboard with a small set of needlenose pliers a trivial move. If you need to go this route, do it carefully and properly.

A bit after I replaced my network card, Realtek provided a drop-in driver for the WiFi card that is in the Wind. By all accounts that I’ve read, this approach “just works” and is an easy install. I believe the Realtek card is 802.11 B/G/N, whereas the Dell cards are just B & G, so there is a bit of an advantage to just adding the driver. I occasionally consider putting the default card back in, but I just haven’t gotten around to it.

Adding the memory and swapping the WiFi card was very quick and easy. I believe that doing both took me less than 10 minutes, and some amount of that 10 minutes involved me getting my soldering iron and waiting for it to warm up. The insides of the MSI wind are very easy to get to, and these specific parts are straightforward and accessible. Some of the other modifications out there, such as modifying the mouse buttons, or replacing the touchpad, will take more time and effort. I may do them at some point, but for now, I just wanted a basic laptop.

Tags: MSI, WiFi, Wind