Gamez and Gadgetz

After having my Advent 4211 for four months, I thought it was time a review was posted up about it. The Advent 4211 is a rebadged MSI Wind U100 exclusive to UK retailer PC World. The 4211 comes with the same specs you would find on an MSI Wind U100 including a 10 inch screen, 80GB hard drive, 1GB of RAM, Intel Atom N270 processor and Windows XP Home installed. Available for £280 it’s price is slightly higher than it’s Eee PC counterparts, but considering the specifications over the lower priced netbooks it is a good deal. Since purchasing the 4211b, PC World have now got the 4211c in stock which for the same price features a 160GB hard drive making this netbook an even better deal.

While I had moved on to Windows Vista on my other machines the change back to XP was smooth and easy making the operation system a selling point of this machine, a Linux based model, while cheaper would require getting to know a whole new OS. Service Pack 3 is pre-installed on the netbook so there’s no lengthy updates to go through.

The 10 inch display is very easy to get accustomed to. While some applications you may face difficulties with the OK or Accept button going below the task bar, which isn’t a problem for those who have Auto Hide Toolbar enabled. Likewise the keyboard is very easy to adapt to using and is very sturdy. I use a lot of keyboard shortcuts on various applications and some laptops I’ve used have been unnatural to use for keyboard shortcuts, but the Advent 4211 keyboard is nicely spaced out.

Other specifications found on the 4211 include bluetooth, Wifi, built in web cam and microphone, giving it great connectivity options. Cyberlink YouCam is pre-installed on the netbook which could easily rival Apple’s iBooth as just as much fun can be had from the software.