Laptop Thoughts: MSI P600 and S6000 North American Debut

"Hold onto your hats folks: it's another notebook, from MSI! It's a modern day miracle, we know. All kidding aside, we can't complain with the amount of laptops that keep flowing from MSI. After all, competition's good for us all. The company's newest two machines, the P600 and S6000, are both making their U.S. debut this week, with both of them falling into the popular 15.6" category."

MSI has a reputation for building solid laptops and netbooks that perform well, and are affordable. With the P600 and S6000, their goal is to provide systems offering "multimedia, entertainment and business capabilities" for work and play. The Intel Core i5 equipped P600, at 5.3-pounds and $829.99, contains an optical drive, and an 8-cell battery that MSI claims will last 8 hours, while its sibling, the 5.0-pound and $799.99 S6000 is slimmed-down, still with an Intel Core i5, but with a 4-cell battery and no optical drive. The P600 will be available online, while the S6000 will (also) be sold in stores. Could this be serious competition for the 15.6-inch MacBook Pro at half the cost?