Jointly with Intel and Microsoft, MSI held a pre-Computex press conference earlier today in Taipei to unveil its range of X-Slim notebooks including the X340 (13"), X400 (14") and X600 (15.6"). They aren't a slim as American maker Apple has got their products, but they are still pretty impressive.

The star of the show and the product which got the most snaps by fellow media was MSI's upcoming U200 netbook. You may be familiar with MSI's U100 series of netbooks using Intel's famous low power Atom processor. The U200 netbook is based on Intel's Consumer Ultra Low Voltage (CULV) platform and we were lucky enough to get hands on with it.

(Click the above image for the large version)

MSI's U200 features a 12-inch 16:9 widescreen LED display with a 720p HD capable resolution of 1366 x 768. It comes with an Intel Penryn ULV SFF 723 processor which is a single-core Celeron 723 processor clocked at 1.2GHz - no Hyper Threading, so only single core action here. Graphics are provided by the Intel GMA 4500M, yawn...

(Click the above image for the large version)

It also includes 2GB (1 x 2GB - single channel) DDR2-800 memory, 250GB hard disk drive, 802.11n, Bluetooth 2.0 EDR and after removing the battery, we also noticed a SIM card slot on the back for 3G mobile Internet access. It weighs in at 1.4KG with the 3-cell 2200mAh battery installed - don't expect huge battery life hours with this.

(Click the above image for the large version)

Overall impressions are quite good. The plastic material used is stylish and very smooth, track pad was okay but maybe a little too shiny making it a little hard to move the cursor around, but it might have just needed a clean.

(Click the above image for the large version)

It managed to score a Vista rating of 3.2 with the lowest performing part being the Celeron CULV processor. Unsurprisingly, the graphics sub-system was not far behind.

More pictures for your viewing pleasure below:

(Click the above image for the large version)

(Click the above image for the large version)

(Click the above image for the large version)

(Click the above image for the large version)

(Click the above image for the large version)

(Click the above image for the large version)

More coming right up - stay tuned!