MSI u110 netbook fail

When looking for a netbook last year, I really wanted something that had a TON of battery life. My dad had success with the Acer One netbook that last 3 hours or so, but I really wanted something that lasted longer. I picked up the MSI u110 netbook on newegg when it was on sale (about 25% off).

Right away, I noticed the battery life was about 12 hours. That's amazing! I was very impressed.

It wasn't until newegg's return policy was up that I finally connected it to a network with the RJ45 cable.... NOTHING. Windows7, nor Ubuntu 10.04 recognized that the jack even existed. (lspci showed nothing). (As a side note: the GMA500 graphics chip is God-awful in linux and I couldn't recommend it less.) I was upset, but MSI said that they would take a look at it. Unfortunately, I use the netbook constantly, and being out of a computer for God-knows-how-long wasn't really an option.

Now, tonight, I'm having another issue: The built-in display of the netbook is messed up. Not missing pixels or random lines of goop. It's completely different than that: the screen resolution is wrong. The display should be 1024x600 (since it's a 16:9 widescreen) but it comes up is 4:3 formats, like 1024x768. What does that mean? It means that when Windows loads, you can't see the task bar. Really! You can't move the mouse to click on something that doesn't exist. The computer is essentially useless.

Allow me to demonstrate:

Argh... It started working again. I HATE computers that changed their minds. When I booted it up just now to take a picture, my camera phone wasn't ready yet, so I turned the netbook back off. When I finally had the camera ready, it displayed the correct resolution. Seriously: Very frustrating.

I did notice that the "detected display" that came up in windows this time was different than when it was acting up. When it came up wrong, it said "flat panel display" and wouldn't let me change the drivers for it. When it came up correctly just now, it says "mobile PC display" and won't let me change the drivers either.

I don't doubt that MSI is a good company, since they have plenty of good ones, but the intel GMA 500 graphics chip is a complete dud. I hate it, and I wish I'd never bought this netbook. I wish I could have done more research and found something that worked better.

End rant.