Advent 4211 user reviews

Linda Mason 16 December 2010

Good: Screen

Bad: Battery life is crap!

Comment: My daughter, a friend and I all bought one of these roughly at the same time. The convenience is great if you have mains power - we have all experienced the same problem, the battery life is crap!! I have just bought a new battery despite the netbook having had little use, an expensive experiment but need the use of it. All of us are very disappointed.

Michelle Nixon 4 September 2010

Comment: so want this, by the sounds of all the previous reviews, theres not much to complain about besides the normal battery issues, will be getting one very soon !!!!

juliem23 11 June 2009

Good: Dont know but prefer it to my superb spec laptop

Bad: Feeling guilty cos i'm on it instead of laptop or desktop

Comment: This was a spur of the moment purchase in Comet for my other half who likes to surf in the evenings (on his desktop in another room) - I had suggested that a netbook would be great as he could sit and ebay / facebook etc with me in the same room. So, after a false start at PC World (the only one in stock with a decent spec was Pink) - we bought one of these literally from reading the spec ticket in the shop and knowing that we wanted XP in about 2 minutes.
I can honesly say it was the best impulse purchase ever. I am sure we would have been delighted with a lower end netbook but this one is surely the best.
Its more reliable (we've never crashed it and it takes a solid battering from us all most days) than my laptop. Its just as fast as our all singing desktop. You can truly walk around with it without it being too small to work on / look at or too big to wonder where to put it like a laptop.
Thats enough - we think its great - in fact now I want one all for myself !

xavierwright 5 September 2008

Good: Everything I need for a business laptop

Bad: WiFi Drivers needed to be updated to get WiFi to Work

Comment: This is a great laptop replacement, the keyboard is big enough for casual use. I use mine on the train each day and have no problems. The only problem was that the WiFi didn't work out of the box, a windows update was required to get the correct driver, a sloppy oversight by PCWorld. Great for holidays as it take little room and weight. Sometimes the screen resolution can cause probelms especially with some OU programmes I run

garry schloegl 17 August 2008

Good: Good screen, keyboard, webcam and design

Bad: Not easy to upgrade memory

Comment: After using the ASUS eeepc 701 I grew to like the small form factor. The small screen and keyboard were usable but i wished they were bigger. The 4211 has a full size keyboard, and a screen size that is ideal for viewing the web and for watching video feeds and films. The lack of cd-rom drive is not really an issue as pc world do offer to install office and other apps for you(at a price) but I use openoffice as it is free and easy to download from the open office website. The 4211 does not get as hot as the ASUS and it is a little larger, but for me this is fine. I am a student and this tiny marvel does everything I need it to but i', sure it could do more if I needed it too. All round good machine that I would encourage anyone to invest in if they needed a second computer or a laptop.

anonymous 11 August 2008

Good: Tiny, Light, Capable

Bad: Bit slow at times (as you might expect)

Comment: Great little this perfect for notes in lectures (i.e facebooking) looking farward to a Wind 6 cell battery, or one of those unnoficial home-made 9-cell ones.
Who can complain about having a Wind for £50 less?

Can be a bit slow at times, an extra GB of ram (around £15) helps alot. As does keeping as little running in the background as possible. Still capable of running Office '07 effortlessly though.

neuralsurfer 8 August 2008

Good: Price, Portability, Performance

Bad: Battery Life

Comment: Totally impulsive buy especially after I saw it for the first time at PC World when it was out of stock. The second time I went to see it over lunch time - they had it in stock and I had to have it! I called my wife shortly after and said - thanks for my birthday gift for this year.

Now to the real review - I have been looking for something portable, light and effective to use while travelling for work and otherwise. The Advent 4211 is absolutely superb for internet use, basic office/word processing (plenty of RAM at 1GB), storage (120 GB although not solid state) and media connectivity (usb ports, card reader etc.).

The chances are that you would have read other reviews on the internet by the time you get to this one – so at the risk of repeating what the others may have said (although similar reviews show consistency and perhaps re-assure the person considering the product) the downsides are the following:

1.) The battery life really sucks. You get about 2 hours but just watching the battery symbol deplete rapidly somehow makes the process more unpleasant. Of course there is a cure to this – wait for the 6 cell lithium ion battery which will come out soon unless there are more fires at the factory in Taiwan/Korea.

2.) There is no optical drive which can be a pain especially when you want to install new software and or watch movies while on a plane. I have an 8GB flash drive which I plan to use but still no substitute for an optical drive! The 120 GB hard disk is big enough for storage of movies if you plan in advance. I still need to run a movie on it to see what the quality is like. The external speakers are decent but I presume you will be using headphones.

3.) The keyboard although great and much better than the Asus can be a bit cramped but is by and large very functional unless you have monster fingers.

4.) The appearance – alright now I am nit-picking – could be sleeker but no means is it unpleasant or tacky. It is minimal but well finished in a ‘less is more’ kind of way. The Asus in my opinion looks like a cheap toy while the Acer, although quite sleek looks very blingy! It must be those ultra bright screens which are absolutely non-functional while using outdoors. So to put it in perspective the Advent figures in the middle of cheap/tacky/blingy and sexy sleek and sophisticated styling on ultraportables such as VAIO and the LifeBook.

I would like to end by saying that this laptop is perhaps the BEST value for your money currently in the market. I chose it over Asus (700’s, 901 and the 1000), Acer Inspire One and the small HP notebook (which by the way is quite sexy but apparently very very slow I hear – not to mention a steep price-tag.) I have two other laptops at home which serve all my heavy duty needs – this one is a great addition for mobility. The VAIO and Lifebook would be nice to have but would I spend so much money considering such a cheap and good alternative in the market – especially for 2nd laptop buyers like myself. Good luck shopping.

joe825 6 August 2008

Good: Portability, Screen, Performance

Bad: Battery Life

Comment: I'd already ruled out Eee PC as cheap and tacky, Wanted an MSI Wind but pricey and elusive. When I read review of Advent 4211 I wanted one. My local PC World had 8 in stock, rushed round and got one straight away.
Up and running within minutes of getting it home. After running Winodws Update about 15 updates on top of XP SP3 installed. I went to the MSI website and downloaded all the latest drivers for the Wind. Several installs and reboots later all up and running great.
No noisy fans, No 'static' reboots, runs cool, quiet and quicker than my Vista Core 2 Duo laptop.
Only drawback is battery life. Waiting for 5/6 cell replacement battery.
Shame the 'Turbo Boost' feature of the Wind appears to have been dropped.
If you're looking for an great UMPC, get one of these!

laupy1 25 July 2008

Good: specification

Bad: worried about quality

Comment: Just taken mine back to PC world for a refund. Got it out of the box and it would only switch on for 3 seconds then cut out
Man at PC world said mine was 3rd to come back. Other 2 had motherboard failures. None in stock so I got my money back.
Its only been on sale a week and they had limited stock, so this seems a high failure rate.

scrappydoo 20 July 2008

Good: The portability and exclusivity of a OEM laptop!

Bad: The alleged static buildup that crashes it!

Comment: Well i was reading the previews on several sites including here and wanted an ultraportable but didn't want to pay £1000 for something that performed similarly to my old 15.4 laptop that i wanted to replace (a 4kg laptop and cycling do not go together!).

so i settled on either acer aspire one or the advent 4211/msi wind. I didn't see the point in paying extra for the msi badged version just to get a different colour, so that was out. Turned out that the Acer was next to impossible to buy and was out of stock until at least the end of the month so managed to wangle a returned advent 4211 at my local pc world after 2 weeks of looking for it!

Got briefed that it had been returned same day by unhappy customer as it allegedly switched itself off (due to static buildup) but the techs could find nothing wrong with it so i took it on the spot and was shown how to discharge the alleged buildup... hmmmmm you may be thinking...

well it has happened a few times now and it is particularly annoying, but am prepared to put up with it as it is such a great, light little laptop and on seeing it in the office, 2 people were prepared to buy one on the spot!

It's great, the keyboard, although smaller than a mornal mlaptop, is easy to use and I was touch typing withing 15 minutes or so.

The 3 cell battery lasts around 2 1/4 hrs with wifi active and nothing really seems to vary the duration - wifi maybe takes 20 mins off it but that may be due to running several apps simultaneously.

All in all it's a fantastic buy at the price, nothing really comes close.. a friend has a Eee 700 and i was not impressed with the tiny screen. I much prefer the slightly larger screen that is clear and bright and easy to use.

Overall - 9/10, the only thing to stop it getting a 10 is the alleged static issue. WOuld be interesting to see if anyone has this issue. Despite being told "it's a common laptop issue" I wasn't convinced from 10yrs of using laptops!