MSI announced today that it is finally shipping pre-orders of its long-awaited Wind U100 notebooks. The low-priced notebooks are also now available from a number of online and brick-and-mortar retailers, including Amazon, Newegg, Frys Electronics, and Buy.com.

Available for a base price of $499, the U100 Wind packs a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor an 80GB hard drive, and 1GB of DDR2 RAM into a 2.3 pound package. The system runs Windows XP Home Edition, and should squeeze about three hours of life out of its three cell battery.

In September, MSI is set to begin selling a version with a six cell battery and a Linux three cell version.