Advent 7032 Centrino Notebook

Since the arrival of battery-friendly technologies such as Centrino, notebook users can enjoy using them away from the mains for longer. Taking advantage of this, the Advent 7032 swaps the muscle of most desktop replacements for greater mobility and multimedia capability.

At first glance, Advent appears to have taken inspiration from Apple's Powerbook and Ibook designs. Flipping open the lid reveals a semi-transparent keyboard and 15.2in widescreen TFT screen. These displays are becoming increasingly common, largely due to the arrival of integrated DVD-Rom drives and the desire to watch DVD movies, which are often coded at a 16:9 aspect ratio.

At the screen's native resolution of 1,280 x 854 (WXGA) everything looks crisp and sharp. While it's possible to lower the resolution, doing so results in squashed unsightly icons, text and images.

A set of tinny stereo speakers is built into the base of the notebook, but they are only really suitable for basic Windows sounds. Those keen on their audio will find the sockets housed on the front of the case more useful, allowing for connection to an external amplifier. Next to these are controls for CD and DVD playback, while an integrated microphone sits by the touchpad. The pad itself seems slightly smaller than normal and lacks any form of scrolling device, which is a shame. On the other hand, the keyboard is large and comfortable, which makes it easy to type on.

Other notable external features include a keyboard lock, a PC Card slot, Ethernet, modem, S-Video and mini Firewire ports, three USB2 sockets and infra-red, parallel and serial interfaces. There's also a blue power LED - always a winner in our book.

As mentioned, the 7032 is yet another notebook using Intel's Centrino technology, which means longer than usual battery life and integrated Wifi networking. In our Batterymark tests, the Advent put in a performance of three hours and 31 minutes before giving up the ghost. It may not be in the same league as the Acer Travelmate 661LMi (reviewed on page 54), which got an outstanding score of four hours and 27 minutes, but this is still plenty of time to do a good amount of work or watch almost two DVD films - unless you fancy a date with Kevin Costner and his dancing wolves.

The final part of the holy Centrino trinity is a 1.5GHz Intel Pentium M processor, combined with 512MB of DDR-Ram. In productivity tests, this produced a rather average Sysmark 2002 score of 153, and we would have expected a slightly higher mark given the clock speed. In real-world terms, this won't mean much to users who want to surf the web or write letters, but those looking to do a spot of image or video editing may want something faster.

Powering the graphics is an Nvidia Geforce FX Go5200 chip. With 64MB of dedicated memory, it runs 3D games fairly well for a notebook, notching up 45.6fps (frames per second) in our Unreal Tournament tests. We also managed to play through an entire level of the latest 3D-hungry Battlefield 1942 expansion pack without any drop in frame rate, albeit on a medium graphics-quality setting. In 3Dmark 2001, the Advent scored a whopping 6,623.

The supplied 80GB hard disk is standard fare for a notebook of this price, but more exciting is the inclusion of a DVD writer for creating DVD-R/RW discs. The maximum writing speed for DVD is two-speed, while CD-Rs can be written at 10-speed. However, this notebook's most interesting characteristic is the slot-loading drive. As well as looking the part (and reinforcing our Apple theory), it also means there's no fiddling around with pop-out drives; just slide the disc into the slot and the drive gobbles it up. Press the eject button and the drive spits out the disc for you to remove.

In terms of software, Advent supplies Windows XP Home and Microsoft Works 7 to get you started with word processing, spreadsheets and other standard tasks. There's PowerDVD for getting the most out of your digital movies, while Nero Express allows you to create your own DVD movies and audio CDs.

While there are certainly faster and lighter notebooks available, the Advent provides a combination of style, substance and value for money. On the whole, it's a pretty good all-rounder.

Contact: Advent 0870 546 4464
www.pcworld.co.uk

Specifications:

• Windows XP Home Edition
• Intel 1.5GHz Intel Pentium M
• 512MB DDR-Ram
• 80GB hard disk
• 2x DVD-R/1x DVD-RW/10x CD-R/RW
• 64MB Nvidia Geforce FX Go5200
• 15.2in TFT (1,280 x 854 native
• Microsoft Works 7, Nero Express, PowerDVD
• 2.7kg
• 260 x 32 x 352mm (w x h x d)
• 12 months collect and return warranty