When we first got a peek at the MSI WindBox in November, we loved it. When we saw it for ourselves at CES 2009, we still loved it.

Essentially, the WindBox is an ingenious but simple device that mounts itself inconspicuously on the back of an LCD monitor, transforming it into a space-saving, self contained computer.

The hardware inside the little box is almost identical to that found inside the MSI Wind netbook, which is also little different from nearly the entire netbook market.

The WindBox is slightly different in thermal design in that it has no active cooling, which means it’ll operate in near silence, save for the hum of the hard disk drive.

While we had suspected much of it ourselves already, MSI today released specifications on the WindBox -- the Atom N270, Intel 945GSE + ICH7M, Intel GMA 950 graphics, LAN, b/g Wi-Fi and 1 GB RAM. Perhaps the one sore point is that it only features VGA out, meaning that monitors accepting DVI input wouldn’t be all that they could be.

Unfortunately, MSI’s press release today was still mostly a tease, offering a vague release date of 2009 Q1 without any price. We hope to get our hands on one soon.

Source : Tom's Hardware US