There’s no denying that the Asus Eee PC has set a new standard in affordable and portable computers so it comes as no surprise that the competition is trying to come up with their own line to lay stake at the huge piece of the market Asus has already claimed with its successful debut product.

Now, MSI is doing just that with the Wind. Provided of course that it stays true to its reported specs and price, the Wind can indeed make a worthy opponent for the Eee in the ultraportable battlefield. It runs on the Intel Shelton ’08 platform and comes with processor speeds ranging from 1.0 to 1.6 GHz, a 10-inch display, 1 GB of RAM, option of HDD or SSD storage, and a purported 7-hour battery life. OS options are likewise available with either a Linux or Windows installed on it. The expected selling price will range from a very affordable $ 458 to a very expensive $ 1078 depending on the configuration. More pics can be found at PC World Italia.

Hopefully, the more affordable versions won’t be lacking too much with regards to specs so that it will be a viable option as opposed to the popular unit of Asus. For now, it’s time to play the waiting game once again, but it probably won’t take too long before we see a changing of the guard in the ultraportable market segment when the Wind finally becomes available.