PC World Advent 4211 Netbook

[broc]

According to those 'in the know' the PC World Advent 4211 netbook is a rebadged MSI Wind priced at £280 with 10" widescreen, 80gb HDD, 1gb memory XP Home and Atom processor.

I just wish I could bring myself to buy from PC World

[googlemad]

Nice bit of kit this - But there is a known hardware issue with the touchpad meaning mine is having to go back!!

(The touchpad is picked up as a PS/2 mouse so now scrolling!). And it is not a driver issue

[ajbooker]

Bought first ones in UK from PC World in my area. Had to go back after 2 days as kept on turning itself off and overheating. replacement a lot better but think I need to flash BIOS/ update drivers soon. Am waiting for a few more other hardy souls to do this before I follow.

I have decided to use the 4211 this year instead of my DELL 9300 17" monster which is 3 years old but still going strong. At home I have, right now, the 9300 plugged into 2 x 24" HD monitors for a huge desktop, but i can also use the 4211 with one of these monitors as the Intel integrated graphics chipset in it supports full 1920 x 1200 desktop. I can run full screen Sketchup with reasonable quality models fine, and also 800 x 600 Trackmania games, and it does very well with Quake 3 as well at low resolution on the 4211's own screen.

For Office and some other apps, the 600 vertical resolution can cause some dialogue box problems, but nothing terrible.

Overall i am extremely impressed with the 4211 / wind, but when some of those dual core atoms with a better screen and other bits come on the market next spring, i will give this to the kids and buy a new one.

Quick tip, the £9 case that carphone warehouse are selling for their Elonex netbook fits the 4211/wind perfectly.

I have also had terrible problems with PC World customer service. deliberately rude and have not replied to my official complaint about wanting to overnight soak test the first 4211 which I had only had for 48 hours when i returned it because of problems, and giving conflicting advice. As I was buying as a business customer, i was shocked to say the least. I believe you take your life in your hands when you go in there and something goes wrong.

[ajbooker]

Have had the 4211 for a few months now and have to say there are a few issues coming to light.

the first is that there are bios updates and various driver fixes, but inexplicably they see saw up and down the version numbers as they are 'tested' by users and withdrawn. Still think it will settle down soon though but the appearance of being used as a beta guinea pig persists.

Main problem is that when new, the whole thing was zippy and after installing standard Office, Sketchup and various other bits, all worked fine, even with a few applications simultaneously running. A few months later, everything is slowing down. Have virus checked and adawared and found nothing amiss, but I suspect that the processor and system cannot cope with the demands of windows XP and its constant updates and security fixes. Using Word and other office software is fine by itself, but the whole thing slows down quite a bit when other programs are open. It is particularly slow at returning control to a program when you switch to its window. This hints at a memory problem but considering the 1GB memory and XP, this should not be so much of an issue.

I am still recommending them for use by Diploma students needing a cheap small portable device, but I am investigating something with more beef for my general work... I strongly suspect that the dual core Atom processors coming by Christmas, when combined with a second generation motherboard to match it will sort a lot of the issues out but for now, a good tiny computer for general use, but NOT a replacement for a standard laptop specced by the ICT literate!

[Daleus]

Originally Posted by ajbooker

Quick tip, the £9 case that carphone warehouse are selling for their Elonex netbook fits the 4211/wind perfectly.

£1.99 on ebay, '10" laptop case'

Also, if you're planning to put Linux on, use Ubuntu 8.04 as every device works out of the box except wireless, and theres a script on the MSI wind WIKI for that. <2 minutes of a job.

Ubuntu 8.10's Kernel won't work with that method though, so avoid until further notice.