What’s all the fuss about? This thought kept running around in my head as I examined the MSI PR200 Notebook twelve-incher. Conceived as a business ultra-portable, this 1.8 kg black-and-silver creation looks handsome and functional, and the specifications are quite satisfying.

It won a Red Dot Design award in 2007, and trumps most other notebooks in its class with thoughtful features aimed at the business crowd and the multimedia-conscious. Yet this laptop seems to be more utilitarian than design-based; it doesn’t seem to be something bought because it looks good on a desk – in other words, I can’t see why Red Dot would give this laptop a design award.

                                             Nothing fancy means nothing that can go wrong - a standard and comfortable layout.

The words I would have preferred to use would have been “sensational”, “powerful”, and “beautiful” but in truth the PR200 hardly reaches that level of praise. These middling comments may be more than enough to damn most other notebooks in this class, but that is not the case with this MSI. Starting with the design of the laptop, the MSI PR200 maintains a soberness not far removed from, say, a dedicated server or a professional graphics workstation. Design elements include a “floating” screen, clean front and rear with a minimal number of connections at the flanks, a cheese-grater-looking area above the keyboard that holds additional buttons, and the sleek MSI logo encircled by the usual aluminum-look ring.

                                             P1 & P2 buttons are for media quick access. Note perforated - design silver strip that sets off the black keyboard.

The overall design is very clean, and in any other product would be called plain. But in this business-oriented laptop that’s made by one of the world’s biggest IT companies, the functional look properly emphasizes its purpose, while at the same time retaining enough vestige of design suave to win over the critics at Red Dot and presumable, a lot of serious “workhorse” consumers too.

                                             VGA-out, LAN connector, USB and the multi-DVD drive adorns the left side.

The “workhorse” part may be due in part to the aforementioned design direction, but the main reason for naming the notebook as such is feature upon feature that  underline this notebooks capability, plus a few surprising extras. This include Intel’s Core 2 Duo T5450 @ 1.66GHz (for our particular model anyway – higher processors are available), 1 GB of DDR2 RAM, the GMA X3100 that comes with the Intel’s 965 Express chipset, and an ACV (Amazing Crystal Vision) widescreen 12-incher. What came as a surprise were the HDMI output port, the (optional) digital TV receiver port, a respectable 1.3MP webcam, fingerprint reader, and an AI Array Mic. Most of these features are self-explanatory, except for the DTV port – it requires an external antennae that catches DVB-T broadcasts (unavailable here), and the AI Array Mic – which bears description due to its ability to receive sound from an isolated area where the speaker (presumable facing the webcam) will be speaking from. Extraneous sound below, above, and to the sides of this area is not recorded, making for clearer conversations and recordings.

                                              PC Card Express, Card reader, 2 SUB slots, an HDMI connector, plus the modem and a DTV antennae connector on the right side.
 

“Damning” praise indeed, yet with features like these, making a revolutionarily – designed laptop would have been a good idea, but on the other hand, the intended users of this model are serious business professional, not style-conscious socialites. It is the integration of a lot of useful features, plus some that are a bit extraneous for business, but still discrete and usable enough, combined with a no-nonsense approach to the design process with just enough brightwork that make this staid and simply designed laptop rise from just being “plain” to a Red Dot winner and a best-value laptop due to its quality and price.

Watch out for an in-deoth review in an upcoming issue of HWM! More pictures to follow.

                                             Fingerprint reader in between the trackpad buttons - not a very convenient location.

                                              The 1.3MP webcam is flanked by the AI Array Mic - a complete teleconferencing suite.