Advent 7026

We've been inundated by slimline notebooks recently, so it's refreshing to see a good a more powerful desktop replacement. At 3.3kg, Advent's 7026 is a fairly hefty beast and therefore best moved only occasionally.

This doesn't mean that it loses points for style though, and the metallic casing looks good. Flicking open the case reveals the 15in screen, which runs at a resolution of 1024 x 768 and displays a clear image.

The key-board works well and there's plenty of space for your hands, although the keys feel a little flimsy.

There's the usual set of built-in notebook stereo speakers, which provide adequate sound, but you are advised to invest in a separate set of speakers for use at home.

Around the outside of the case are the usual range of ports and connectors. The only part of the case that really stuck out was the multimedia buttons at the front. These let you play MP3 files or CDs without having to start Windows, thus saving battery power when all you want is some music.

The 7026 is kitted out with a DVD-R/-RW drive so that files can be archived to DVD or CD.

Internally, the 7026 has a 2.66GHz Pentium 4 processor with 512Mb of memory. These specifications resulted in good scores in our system tests.

The 40Gb hard disk is adequate for most software needs but you might struggle if you have a lot of digital photographs, videos and MP3 files.

The ATI Radeon 9000 graphics card is a good choice and can handle the current range of games without a struggle.

The notebook's battery life was just short of three hours, which is fairly good. It has no anti-virus software, which is a shame, but does come bundled with Windows XP and Works 7.

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