Advantages: sleek design, nice overall feel, bright, wide screen, good price
Disadvantages: trackpad a little over-sensitive, CPU not latest, dodgy support

...Advent is the PCWorld/Dixons own brand, the shipping box in fact says Dixons even though I got mine from PCW. It's been available for around the £500 mark online but somewhat more in store (most recently £550). When I saw it marked at '£500 voucher price' I figured it was worth asking 'what voucher'. After the usual ten minute wait to find someone who knew anything, a mangement type said it was an advert in The Sun, of all places, but no, I didn't actually need the voucher for real, they could do it at £500 for anybody cheeky enough to ask. Fair enough, I thought, because it had a nice bright widescreen and seemed of very decent build quality, in my price range only the Packard Bells seemed more sturdily built, and they lost out on various spec/price points, notably the similarly priced ones were not widescreen. So far I've been... Read review

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Advantages: Power, Quality, Price
Disadvantages: Mismatched colour on fascia of CDRom Drive

...P.C. World's own brand laptop computers would, you suspect have to be of a superior quality and build. In order to claim being the UK's No.1 supplier of computers and accessories they would also have to be able to supply the latest technology at a realistic price. The reason Laptops have not as yet become the industry standard for home computing is the Cost, quality of Screen and poor performance of battery power. PCW's Advent Laptop machines appear to have overcome many of these problems. With competition between retailers and the slump in world sales (against projected figures) causing overproduction, we, the buyers, are benefiting from an enormous drop in retail prices. The Advent 6413 gains strides over the competition through being powered by a 1Ghz Pentium III chip. This chip, fixed to a Fujitsu AT Board and coupled... Read review

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Advantages: A more affordable option for you
Disadvantages: Poor build quality, noisy, overheats, heavy, screen flickers

...I bought the Advent 5490 laptop for £800 in 2001. Perhaps this review may help more recent computer users who are trying to decide what to buy to be aware of the benefits and problems that I found with this product. Usage Everyday for word processing, surfing the Net, emailing. Aftercare I purchased an extended Warranty, for an extra year after the Manufacturer's 1 year Warranty. Initially, the large screen for the price that it was, was rather pleasing, when you compare it with the smaller screens on other 'more well known brands', that you could find for the same type of money. Aesthetically, the laptop is nice - a pleasant dark blue colour. There are some problems which I would like to highlight so that other people can be made aware of what caused me frustration. Bad workmanship/parts? As others have mentioned... Read review

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Advantages: Good Performance, Sleek
Disadvantages: No longer in production

...The Advent 7035 Laptop is an excellent allround powerful machine. It is currently no longer in production so can now only be bought second hand. -Hardware- -Processor: Intel Pentium 4 M 2.80Ghz -Chipset: SiS 650 with onbard 64MB graphics -RAM: 512MB DDR (non upgradable) -Hard Drive: 40GB 7200RPM Seagate (upgradeable) -Display: 15' TFT -Soundcard: Realtek AC'97 audio -Optical Drive(s): CD,DVD Reader/24x CD Writer combo -Modem HSP56 MR-8640 -Additional Features- -PCMCIA Advent Branded WiFi Card (PRISM) -4x USB, 100MBPS SiS 900 LAN, Printer, Serial, Tv-Out, no Game, Firewire or infrared -4 programmable "Quick Launch" Buttons -Convieniant "Power Save" Button -Mouse touchpad -Built-in Microphone and speakers -Microphone and headphone jacks + volume control -Security lock -External VGA -1x PCMCIA slot -Battery LIon... Read review

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Advantages: Cheap
Disadvantages: Poor tech support, poor parts, low quality

...I've had my Advent laptop for about 3 years which I bought from PC World, in that time it has been repaired five times and each time has taken about five weeks to repair! The laptop its self is a generic laptop, built cheaply and then with an Advent badge stuck on it. However when I purchased the laptop it was top of the range and about £700 quid cheaper than other similar branded versions. Of course when I purchased it I was badgered to take the warranty and told things like 'dedicated support line' 'most repairs done within 2 working days' etc. It did cover accidental damage though and the chance of me dropping it or it getting stolen was quite high so I took it out. It is clear that things sometimes go wrong, or get damaged, but so far the case has cracked and needed to be replaced, the screen has needed to be replaced... Read review

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Advantages: decent small computer with good specs
Disadvantages: gets extremely hot

...i have had this laptop from PC world for about 2 weeks now and overall i am very pleased with it! speed: its a very quick little laptop, comes with 512MB RAM (upgradable to 1GB) and a 60GB HD that i find very useful. intel celeron 1.5GhZ processor is very fast and effecient. i can boot to windows desktop within around a minute. look and feel: i think this laptop is a very small and handy laptop, when closed there is the large advent logo i think that looks very nice. it feels a very, well modern laptop and very rugged. the plastics seem to be quite high quality. memory / capacity: like i said before it has 512MB RAM which i think any average PC user would be fine with but there is possibility of upgrading to 1GB. the HD is 60GB which is very good i think for a laptop and definitley does the job for me but is also very... Read review

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Advantages: Cheap and durable
Disadvantages: Gets hot, No firewire

...always use -R formats) and its had to copy a fair number of them so no problems there. The onboard graphics chip is pretty good. You can adjust the settings through the bios. You can (from memory) set the shared garphics from 16mb/32mb/64mb. Remember that the graphics take memory form the installed RAM so if you use the graphics at 64mb you lose 64mb from the 512mb installed. I run mine on 64mb (with my 1gig ramchip) and have run a couple of games very successfully (Grand Theft Auto 3 ran really well, so did Jedi Night 2, both on 800x600 display settings...the standard display is 1024x768 (max)) You can install more ram but there is only a single ram slot in my laptop so to upgrade to 1gig you need to buy a 1gig ram chip and throw the old 512mb away (or sell on ebay!!). This may vary from machine to machine though as I think Advent use... Read review

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Advantages: Playmobil Lasts and Lasts
Disadvantages: Not Cheap, Requires Setup

...When I was a little person, back in the seventies, Advent calendars were simple. They were made of cardboard, with a little, fairly predictable picture behind each window. How things change. This year my parents decided to spoil their Grandchildren, nothing new there, and have bought them both very posh Advent calendars. Shortie, now aged 5, has a small collection of Playmobil which he adores, so my parents have given him a Playmobil Advent calendar. °**° Advent Calendars, a brief background °**° "Advent" comes from the Latin word adventus, which means "coming." Advent is the period of time before Christmas. Although Advent itself begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas, ttraditional Advent calendars have windows or doors which are opened each day from December 1st to December 24th, Christmas Eve. °**° The Playmobil... Read review

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Advantages: Power. Style. Lightweight. CDRW/DVD Combo drive. Fast. Dedicated AGP graphics card with 16MB DDR memory. Not too expensive compared to most other notebooks. Plenty of expansion/add-on ports
Disadvantages: The lack of a floppy drive may be a disadvantage to some, but not to me

...23/06/2002 Impportant Price Note! On a recent visit to Dixons in Belfast I came across the Advent 7006 (the rebrand of mine) for £1197, which is a great reduction of £302! If you're after a great laptop, then this is a perfect chance to get a powerhouse for peanuts! I’ve finally bought a nice shiny new notebook pc after about 3 years of deep thought! It was only by pure chance that I spotted my new toy on a recent visit to everyone’s favourite pc store – PC World (don’t even think about it!), where I’d gone to price a few components for a friend. I was looking for hard drive prices & also for a new LCD monitor for my pc. Whilst wandering around the isles I came to the notebook/portable pc isle & stopped to see what was on offer. After a good look at the various models, I took a shine to the Advent 7002, which was a new range... Read review

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Advantages: Smashing, immersive story arc; haunting musical score; movie-esque widescreen
Disadvantages: Underfunded adventure cost Majesco dearly

...Advent Rising is a third/first person action-adventure romp set throughout a few worlds and ships in the Advent Rising universe. The player controls Gideon Wyeth; one of the last surviving humans after a series of attacks by the evil Seekers; the propagators of a galactic alliance. Legend has told of a race called humans whom will one day ascend into great power and bring harmony to the galaxy, uniting the races under an umbrella of prosperity. The Seekers, frightened by this, start their galactic alliance in order to influence the other races' views of humans. For the Aurelians, nothing can sway them. With the Aurelians' help, can Gideon avert a human extinction at the hands (and they have four!) of the Seekers? When I saw Advent Rising in the store, it was cheap. I'm a sucker for cheap goods even if I don't need them. There... Read review

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