Advent 3219

Like many other mainstream manufacturers, Advent builds stylish PCs with impressive specifications at good prices. On paper, its 3219 model looks set to follow in this well-trodden path. Indeed, the basic nuts and bolts of the Advent's specification are very good. The Intel Pentium 4 processor running at 3.2GHz is going to impress your friends, while the 120Gb hard disk and 512Mb of memory are nothing to be ashamed about either. Advent expects owners of this PC to be game players, so there is also an nVidia 5900 graphics card shoehorned into the case as well. Our tests showed the Advent to be a capable performer for its specification rather than an incredible one but we were still pretty impressed.

All the features listed so far are pretty pricey so we were looking to see where corners had been cut, as this computer has all the right buzz words but doesn't break the £1,000 barrier. One of the most obvious shortfalls is the omission of a recordable DVD drive. The Advent comes with a DVD-ROM drive, which is suitable for playing back DVD movies and software discs, but not creating them. There is a CD-RW drive, so you can at least make your own CDs. Admittedly, we weren't hugely worried by the lack of recordable DVD but it does limit the usefulness of this computer to would-be video editors.

Although probably a sacrifice of style rather than price, the mouse and keyboard are challenging. The keyboard is shorter than a standard one - which merely takes some getting used to - but the mouse is similarly squat and unpleasant to use for anyone with normal-sized hands. Budget for a regular mouse when pricing up this computer.

There are six USB 2 ports available, one of which is used by the keyboard and two which are mounted on the front of the case for easy connection of cameras and other peripherals, alongside one of the two FireWire ports. The other is around the back of the case with the regular PC ports.

Underneath the floppy disk drive is a memory card reader. This will read six of the seven most popular memory card types, excluding the XD cards used in newer Fuji and Olympus cameras. The monitor is a very impressive 17in TFT model and the requisite 5.1 surround-sound speakers are present.

On the software side it comes with Microsoft Works 7 and a one-year onsite warranty too.

Just as we were getting to like the Advent, though, we opened up the case. We were able to forgive the fact that the processor fan sounded like a Flymo at full tilt, but the wiring inside the case is not so easily forgiven. There is one vacant PCI slot but it is so close to the adjacent modem as to be unusable. There's room for a supplementary hard drive should you need one and also a spare memory slot, but getting to it requires major surgery. Every bit of wiring in this computer runs directly across the top of the memory, making access very difficult.

In terms of specification, performance and appearance, this isn't a bad computer at all. It's just a shame that a number of niggles undermine our opinion of it.

Contact: PC World 0870 546 4464
www.adventcomputers.co.uk