Advent Milano

Full specifications | 1 Comment

Although a 10” netbook chassis leaves ample room for a good size keyboard, not all manufacturers choose to capitalise on it — just take a look at the Lenovo IdeaPad S10-2 for an idea of how not to do it. Advent, thankfully, hasn’t skimped in this regard and the Milano’s keyboard extends right to the very edges of the case (making it exactly 10” wide). The keys are all a good size and have plenty travel, with only a handful of punctuation keys suffering from the shrink ray — the Return and Backspace keys are both oversized, though.

We’re less taken with the trackpad — it’s large and works well enough, but its glossy finish leads to the usual sticky issues we’ve seen on other laptops. A minor point, to be sure, but no less annoying when you’re trying to move the mouse pointer around when your fingertip is a little sweaty.

The Advent Milano has the usual set of netbook ports and the same internal specification as just about every other netbook we’ve reviewed — Intel Atom N270 processor, 1Gb RAM and 160Gb hard drive. That means performance is pretty much the same as every other netbook we’ve reviewed too — not a complaint, just something to note.

Unfortunately, with some manufacturers now sticking bigger batteries in their netbooks to set them apart from the competition, Advent has stuck with a weedy 2200mAh unit for the Milano. This gave BatteryEater Pro Classic and Reader times of one hour 51 minutes and three hours 22 minutes, respectively — hardly terrible, but we haven’t seen netbook battery life this short since those early models from 2008.

So, at £230, the Advent Milano is very good value, but it can be beaten. Amazon is currently offering the Samsung N130 for £229 with a £20 cashback deal until 4 December 2009.

We haven’t reviewed the Samsung N130, but it’s from the same new range as the excellent N140 and while its specification is identical to the Milano’s, it does have a longer battery life — up to six hours, it’s reckoned. The only difference is that the model offered by Amazon runs Windows XP, while the Milano ships with Windows 7 Starter.

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