MSI dropped by this morning with an early production sample of its £329 Wind ultraportable and we spent some time getting familiar with this direct competitor to the Eee PC 900.  

The MSI Wind goes on sale the second week of June in the UK, and will be formally launched at Computex on 3rd June. The full specification is already widely known, but we promised to play coy and not reveal what processor can be found in this particular model until the formal annnouncement. So, bear that in mind as you take a gander at the photos after the cut.

Mobile browser outfit Skyfire Labs has bagged an additional $13m in funding, according to Mobilecrunch.

Skyfire was founded two years ago with a mission to produce a “free, downloadable mobile browser that delivers rich web media”. The new $13m injection brings the total invested in the company to $17.8m. So far, though, all this money has got the Skyfire browser only to a first beta, and that’s an invitation-only affair. A second beta is in the works and would-be users can sign up to go onto a waiting list for the testing programme.

Saving up for a Centrino 2 notebook? Then it looks like you’ll have a little longer to gather together sufficient cash to splash on Intel ’s next great mobile marchitecture adventure.

Tech site TG Daily is reporting that it has been told by sources close to Intel that the chip-maker will delay the introduction of Centrino 2, aka Montevina, until 14th July 2008. TG Daily calls this a ‘substantial’ delay.

Now, this might be considered true by the highly techie types who frequent TG Daily but come on, let’s have some perspective – it’s only a couple of weeks later than Intel’s intended roadmap. And no-one’s going to die for having to wait an extra fortnight to pick up a Centrino 2 notebook, are they?

We’re getting to know more and more about Sony’s forthcoming Xperia X1 smartphone, even if it’s not entirely clear when the device may actually go on sale.

The Xperia will be produced in conjunction with HTC, which doubtless explains the TyTN II-like keyboard design. It’ll be quad-band with HSUPA, have both Wi-Fi, Bluetooth A2DP and Assisted GPS (A-GPS). It measures 110 x 17 x 53mm, weighs 145g and has a 3in, 800 x 480 screen. But we told you all this three months ago. So what have we learned this week? Well, more after the jump.

Some stories don’t need words and really, this is one of them. Which, to be honest, is just as well because the original tale is told in German and, while we do have a German-speaker on the team, it just so happens to be their week off.

So, what’s going on here then? Well, as if it needed any explanation, Google’s German-to-English translation stab at it reckons that Apple Talk member Jensche found himself at home with this tasty loaf of bread but lacking a bread knife. Rather than just using his hands, as any sane person might, his photo suggests that he instead used the leading edge of his MacBook Air as a cutting blade. Did he use the flat side of his iPod Nano to do the buttering, we wonder?

Taiwanese PC component manufacturer VIA has made the reference design for its OpenBook Mini-Note ultraportable laptop available as a free open source download.

According to the press release, VIA is hoping that making its designed freely available will fuel the growing low-cost ultraportable market, which is no bad thing given the huge amount of interest in laptops like the Asus Eee PC and MSI Wind.More information and lots more images after the cut. 

Sadly, not just yet. But there’s a fantastic look to the future over at the Google Earth Blog, where Frank Taylor has posted a video of an Apple iPhone running a very Google Earth-like application.

The best bet is just to head right over there and enjoy the video for yourself but if you’re feeling lazy, then feel free instead to ogle our screen capture above. In fact, this isn’t Google Earth at all but a tech demo from a company called Earthscape. Gearthblog’s Taylor shot this video while being shown the demo by Earthscape’s CEO, Tom Churchill, at the 2008 Where 2.0 Conference in California a couple of weeks ago.

On the off-chance you’re one of the few people that could give a hoot, Nokia has declared that it will after all allow those who purchase N-Gage games to transfer the licenses when they change handsets. In other words, the games will no longer be tied to the first handset onto which they are installed.

US publication PCWorld reports Nokia’s Scandinavian communications manager, Oskar Södergren, as saying: “Internally there have been some mixed messages in this matter as well. We have been working on a way for this to work since the relaunch, but it is taking some time for everything to fall into place.”

If a report today by Digitimes is accurate then Intel will launch a series of solid-state drives (SSDs) by the end of this year.

The drives are expected to become part of the Centrino 2 platform, Digitimes reports “sources at PC makers” as saying. According to the story, Intel will call the new product line High Performance SSD and will target the gear at enterprise, mid-range and high-end notebook markets. There’s a bit more (dull) stuff after the jump.