I’d been thinking about getting a “netbook” since the original Asus 701 was released, but having tried that there was no way my fat fingers were going to manage using it. The whole market has expanded recently and I tried the Merida thingie (another MSI Wind clone) in Sainsburys the other day and it seemed pretty good. Sadly though, it had no bluetooth so I didn’t buy it. Looking online threw up that PC World sold the Advent 4211, same thing but with bluetooth and a higher spec webcam, for 20quid less – 70quid less than the equivalent MSI Wind. I happened to be driving past a PC World on Wednesday afternoon so I stopped in and bought one (that experience is worth a posting of its own…).
I have no idea what the ULCPC bit means but it comes with XP, which works much like XP does. Its been bastardised by “The Tech Guys” but I’ve not really seen how other than the restore partition and the pointless Advent manual that is for desktop PCs and so was swiftly deleted.
The hardware itself is pretty nice. Its a full spec MSI Wind (bluetooth, 802.11n, Atom 1.6Ghz, 1GB RAM, 80GB HD, 10.1 LED screen) but with Advent written on the hood and in silver and black. The first thing that I noticed though, and so have others by the looks of Google, is that the trackpad sucks. You can not disable tap clicking (which I always do on laptops ‘cos I hate it) and consequently I keep mis-clicking and often find the curser darting about. The buttons too are a but poor, smal and because its one bar, pivoted in the middle, hard to click. Its better with time, but I feel a mod is needed.
Otherwise the little netbook rocks. Its pretty nippy for general internet browsing and Putty work (which is all I do when out and about). The bluetooth talks to my N95 so I can dial-up with 3G. The battery (a titchy 2200mA thing) seems to last for about 2 hours and the charger is pretty small for carrying about too. The keyboard, though small, is quite usable and is better after a few days use (the , . and / keys are really to small, but hey). The screen is gorgeous and despite being small is really nice to use.
If I was picking fault, aside from the trackpad, I’d say it is weghted badly so tends to rock back when the screen is open and that the power cord connector could be higher up the side (sit the 4211 on your lap and you find it pushing the cord up, which isn’t good for it).
I may stick Ubuntu on it too, but to be honest XP is behaving pretty well for me. All in all, I’m pretty pleased thus far with Advent 4211 and hopefully time will be favourable to it. We’ll see.
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