Advent 4213 in Laptops

Advent's last netbook, the 4211, caught us a little by surprise. It may have been an MSI Wind U100 in all but name - it was the same netbook with an Advent logo - but the price was simply fantastic. Where the Wind was launched at around £300, the Advent could be had for £60 less.

Advent's latest effort, the 4312, is something of a different animal, though, with the old MSI Wind chassis discarded in favour of an ECS model. Alas, we're not as impressed.

It's sturdy enough, with a sturdy base and plenty of protection for the screen - wristrest only began to bend or distort after we'd applied plenty of pressure. But the plain black chassis and glossy black lid is both dull and a fingerprint magnet - it's nothing compared to the stylish Eee PC S101 or the HP 2133 Mini-Note.

The keyboard is another low point. The 4312's keys sit flush with the chassis and lack the tapered edges that are employed on the Wind and recent Asus Eee PCs. The keys are also a couple of millimetres shorter than those on rival netbooks and this small change makes a big difference to typing, rendering it far less comfortable than the majority of netbooks on the market.

It's also worth mentioning that both Shift keys and the Enter key have been shrunk and the left-hand side function and control buttons have been swapped around, which takes a while to get used to. It's disappointing as there's a good centimetre of empty space either side of the keyboard that could have been put to better use - the keyboard on MSI's Wind and Asus' Eee PCs make far more of the space available to them.

Thankfully, the trackpad is responsive and easy to use, and the single rocker button - which also harbours four status lights - is just as comfortable. There's also the usual allocation of ports and sockets, with three USB ports, an SD/SDHC flash card reader, Ethernet port, VGA output and headphone and microphone sockets spread around the chassis. The power button is located towards the front of the machine although, disappointingly, it's not very responsive.

The screen is average and it lacks the bright and breezy feel of the screen on Asus' netbooks. The Advent's panel is dull and lacks punch; it is still more than adequate for surfing the web, checking emails or basic office tasks, however.

Inside, the Advent becomes a little more interesting. While Intel's Atom N270 1.6GHz processor, 1GB of RAM and wireless internet is
standard fare for a netbook these days - and results in a perfectly adequate score of 0.37 in our 2D benchmarks - a couple of additions, namely the hard disk and improved wireless connectivity, are worthy of note.

There's HSDPA connectivity, for instance, something that's only just begun to creep into netbooks - the only other netbook to boast this feature is the Vodafone variant of Dell's Inspiron Mini 9 - and on another positive note, the 3G modem here isn't tied to a specific network. Unlike the Elonex Onetwo3 and the Mini you can plug whatever SIM you like into the 4213.

The inclusion of a 160GB hard disk is also generous. It's double the space available to the A-Listed Asus Eee PC 1000H and the MSI Wind U100, and more than enough to store a reasonable media collection without resorting to augmenting your storage space with SD cards.