Advent 7011

For just £1,200 the reasonably stylish 7011 represents a fantastic on-paper bargain.

First of all, there's a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 chip in there, as well as 256MB of memory. These two together gave a very healthy score of 184 in Sysmark 2002 - plenty for office and internet applications alike. It also comes with a 30GB hard disk.

We were relieved to find a floppy drive to the left-hand side - something that seems to be appearing less and less on notebooks.

Next to that is an Ethernet port and infrared port. A CD-RW/DVD-Rom combo drive was very welcome as well, occupying the right-hand side, along with a modem, headphone-out and mic-in minijack ports.

The single PS/2 port is accompanied by two USB and mini-Firewire port; S-Video and serial and parallel ports are also round the back.

The 7011 is no gaming notebook - the Sis 650 chipset manages just 1,444 in 3Dmark and two frames per second in Jedi Knight. The 15in screen is large and clear, but we found that it was unevenly lit - the whole screen was never at the same brightness, which was rather irritating after a while.

Microsoft's Works Suite 2002 is included and, while it may not be the best office package around, it still does the job. Power DVD and Nero are also included.

The keyboard is huge and well designed, with everything in its right place.

The 7011 is let down by the battery life. But with the trend for notebooks in offices, this may not be an issue.

SPECS

• 2.4GHz Pentium 4 processor
• 256MB of DDR memory
• 30GB hard disk
• CD-RW/DVD-Rom combo
• Sis 650 graphics chip
• 15in TFT screen
• XP Home Edition
• Weight: 3kg
• Dimensions: 318 x 38 x 258mm (w x d x h)

DETAILS

Price: £1,199 (£1,020.43 ex VAT)

Contact: PC World 08705 464 464