Articles tagged with: advent 4211

PC World's Advent 4211 has been something of a UMPC bargain-hunters' favourite for offering what is essentially an MSI Wind at a cut-down price.

Now its back with a second model, the Advent 4213 but, unfortunately all 'second Wind' puns have been ruined by the fact it doesn't share the MSI rebadge chassis of its predecessor.

What it does share is an identical 10in screen, 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 processor, 1Gb RAM and 80Gb hard disk. But there is one important addition - a SIM card slot for the the built-in HSDPA modem.

Unfortunately, this incremental upgrade also means an upgrade in price too, from an attractive £279.99 for the 4211, to a less wallet-friendly £349.99 for the 4213. Sorry penny-pinchers.

[PC World]

Now you can pick up a MSI Wind Advent 4211 Medion Akoya Mini E1210 with your spuds. Aldi's offering the UMPC rebadge job, which is actually a carbon copy of PC World's Advent 4211 Netbook.

It has the exact same 1.6GHz (or "16 GB" as Aldi interestingly describes it) Intel Atom N270 processor, 10.2in screen, 1GB RAM and 80Gb hard drive as the Advent 4211 (and, of course, the MSI Wind U100). It also comes loaded with identical Windows XP Home. Even the price is the same: £279.99.

But there is one teeny difference, as well as PC World's black and silver, you'll also be able to put a white Akoya in your trolley.

It'll be in Aldi stores from 10am on Sunday - and no doubt sold-out by 10.01am if Aldi's usual specials are anything to go by.

[Aldi]

We've reviewed so many netbooks so far here at Mobile Computer that even we're starting to lose track. So, given that we're forever searching for previous netbook reviews in order to link back in new netbook reviews, we figured you'd benefit from a quick recap of our coverage so far.

So, in an order that started out alphabetical, here's a public service message that shows where you can find all of Mobile Computer's netbook reviews so far:

We’ve had cause to mention the Advent 4211 a few times in the last few weeks, but if you missed our previous coverage, here’s one-sentence recap: the Advent 4211 is essentially the MSI Wind U100 under a different name and with a much lower price.

MSI sells the Advent 4211 to Dixons Sales Group under an OEM arrangement and it does something similar with Medion and the Akoya Mini E1210 in Germany. The price difference, according to MSI, is due to the Advent having a lesser 12-month warranty (the Wind has two years) and less sparkly finish, but we suspect DSG’s more aggressive pricing strategy plays a part, too.

PC World has kindly sent us an Advent 4211 for review – we say ‘kindly’ as we gather that these netbooks are in short supply at the moment and we’re sure PC World would much rather sell any boxes it can get its hands on than ferry them to journalists for review. And to make matters worse, we’re not even going to review the Advent 4211.

Why not? Because we’ve already reviewed it in the guise of the Wind U100 – yes, the Advent 4211 is nothing more than a rebadged MSI Wind netbook. Which is where things get interesting…

An MSI Wind-a-like has turned up on PC World's website sporting an identical chassis and near identical specs. 

Customers are reporting that the only difference between the own-brand Advent 4211 and the MSI Wind is the battery. That and the price - a full £70 cheaper than the Wind U100!

At £279 with Windows XP it could be the bargain 10in UMPC of choice - especially as Asus's competing 10-incher, the Eee PC 1000, is also expected to be well over £300.

We've a full review of the MSI Wind here, and will be getting our hands on the Advent in a few days. Meanwhile click through for the full specs:

As explained in our review, a problem with the way in which some MSI Wind U100 retail units respond to a fully depleted battery means that they need a BIOS update straight from the box. The problem is that BIOS updates need to be run from floppy disk and the MSI Wind, just like the Acer Aspire One and Asus Eee PC, doesn’t have a floppy drive.

An external USB floppy drive is one option, but surely it’s easier to make a bootable USB flash drive and boot the netbook from that, right? Wrong. While netbooks (and most laptops) can be booted from a USB flash drive, the catch is that you still need a bootable DOS floppy to create one...

No sooner did we have word that Asus would be launching a 10in Eee PC, than French rival Medion dropped news of this Gallic competitor, the Akoya Mini E1210. Based on the same Intel Atom chip,  running at 1.6MHz or 1.8Mhz, it'll have a minimum 1GB RAM but will shun SSD storage in favour of a mini 1.8in hard drive. It's the same sort of drive that goes into the iPod and although Medion hasn't mentioned any configurations, they could in theory go up to 100GB.