MSI has announced five new additions to their C-Series notebook line that promise a decent selection of specs and starting prices as low as $549. There are three 16-inch models (the CX600, CR600-013, and CR600-017) all of them offering a 1,366 by 768-pixel display resolution and weighing in at 5.4 pounds, while a pair of 17-inchers (CX700 and CR700) sport 1,600 by 900-pixel displays and weigh just under 6 pounds.


All five laptops ship with Vista Home Premium pre-installed, a 320GB hard drive, 4GB of memory, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11n Wi-Fi wireless networking, and a 6-cell battery, as well as other laptop standards like a 1.3 megapixel webcam, 4-in-1 card reader, and 3 USB ports. The 16-inch CR600-017 even includes a Blu-ray drive for some HD movie watching. It costs $649 and carries a 2.1GHz Pentium Dual Core T4300 processor, whereas the remaining four models pack a 2GHz Pentium Dual Core T4200.

On the graphics front, budget-conscious shoppers looking for some light gaming capabilities will appreciate the Radeon HD4330 discrete graphics on CX models. Meanwhile, the CR line settles with Nvidia GeForce 8200M G integrated graphics but also offer an HDMI output that could come in handy with that Blu-ray equipped model. Overall, there’s not much to get excited about here but with prices between $549 and $799 there’s not much room to complain either.