Hands-on With the MSI Wind Netbox

Although we all still love our giant tower rigs running the hottest hardware (sometimes literally), there's still a certain allure to the simple, space saving form factor of all-in-one computers.

Apple makes it part of its business with the iMac. A problem with the popular iMac, however, is that the underlying hardware becomes obsolete much before the display. Those who want to move from one all-in-one machine to another are forced to ditch the entire old package, and possibly even have to pay for another display all over again.

MSI has one of the most simple solutions we've yet seen to the all-in-one plight -- an idea that anyone can see and think to themselves "why didn't anyone think of this sooner?"

The MSI Wind Netbox was revealed months ago, but we got our first hands on today at the company's booth at CES. Each Wind Netbox comes with a mounting bracket that will help pair the unit with nearly any LCD monitor. The exterior casing of the Wind Netbox was made of metal with a brushed aluminum look. The four colors it comes in make it quite stylish, except that the Netbox will spend most of its life hidden behind the monitor out of view.

Expect the Wind Netbox to share the same performance characteristics as the other Intel Atom-based netbooks on the market -- which means not blazing fast, but perfect for light desktop applications.

Check out the pictures for more.

More from CES 2009

Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.