Advent 9215

I bought the Advent 9215 From pc world for 70.00 (Euro) as it was a display modal and i have found it to be the best laptop i have ever got :)

the only criticism i have for it is the Battery Life is very bad

I was given my Advent 9215 laptop by my sister after she dropped it and pretty much destroyed the original hard drive.

She said she had problems with the webcam and that the laptop was rubbish, vista was too slow, yadda yadda yadda. So she was buying a new one, the broken hard drive was the last straw. she didn't want to waste any more money on it.

She said if I could get it working, I could have it...And that's exactly what I did!

Since fitting a new hard drive and installing Ubuntu 9.10 (a linux OS) it works better than it ever did before. It boots faster than it did under Vista and performs a lot better too. I recall seeing it when my sister had Vista running on it and I'll admit it did seem a bit slow at times.

However, running Ubuntu on the laptop, everything works straight out of the box, including wireless networking. So there was no need to google for obscure drivers or search forums for workarounds or enter any cryptic command-line wizardry to get things working.

I've installed 'gucview' and a few other bits of free webcam related linux software and can also use the webcam (so much for that not working sis, it works fine!). The picture from the webcam isn't the greatest quality, that's down to the webcam itself rather than the software! But it's good enough for making video calls with.

On the whole I am more than happy with the Advent 9215, especially without Windows Vista (I'm not a massive fan of Windows anyway). The only real problem, as others have pointed out is the battery life, which isn't great.

Since installing Ubuntu, I can do everything that I could do with Windows on this laptop and much much more. When my sister saw Ubuntu running on it, she was jealous as hell! (I think she went and bought another lemon with Windows installed on it! heh heh)

Any other Linux users out there who are looking for a semi-decent cheap laptop could do a lot worse than buying one of these! Highly recommended.

to be quite honest, in the first few months of having this laptop it was perfectly fine, but then after that few months a whole number of problems came along, such as the built in webcam didn't work at all, then the server was very slow and when i used my laptop to have an xbox live connection it was a very slow and lagged experience, and above all of this the battery was faulty, had a new one from couriers and then has basically caused the chargers to fail and not be able to be used, I actually would never reccomend this laptop to anybody, and advent should be ashamed.

Advent 9215 is the best laptop you could buy for £400 back in 2007, but had a look at Sony and Dell laptop's and and compare spec because it would seem that the more you pay the less you get, it's still the same in 2009 and a lot of people over looked the voice control that come's with vista.....why.

Great performance, especially for a laptop. It is quiet and is barely audible in a silent room. It looks sleek and stylish (even now in late 2008) whilst remaining robust and well built.The 2GB of RAM keeps it running smoothly, and the dual core processor vastly improves the performance of most applications.The screen has a good brightness level, whilst keeping blacks at a good level. The colours are vibrant and crisp. I have yet to find any video or game that causes ghosting.Graphics card in combination with the VGA port allows an external screen with a resolution of up to 1920x1200. You can use dual-monitor too, meaning that you can also have 1280x800 on the laptop display.Value for money is impeccable, considering that Windows Vista is included.

A great laptop all round. Great performance for the price, brilliant screen, plenty of USB slots and peripheral slots. I would definitely recommend this laptop.

Feel very decieved at PC World battery life apart from being useless it is strange that I cannot buy a new higher capacity one. This would stop me re-purchasing this model. I suggest before buying in future check alternative batteries available.

Great value for money. Very light-weight, which makes it easier to carry my guitars to school and back without having to worry about my laptop breaking my back. Battery life is diabolic in my opinion, but I'm never very far from a plug socket, so that solves that problem for me! Vista Home Premium is fantastic. I don't know why everybody is moaning about it to be honest. It's only Vista Ultimate that has the "dodgy programme" eradicating software, or so I've been told. Overall a great little machine that has it's flaws, but I don't think I could live without it now.By the way, does anybody know whether the wireless card for the 9215 is 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g or 802.11n and is it possible to remove and upgrade the built-in wireless card? Comment me, but I well recommend the Advent 9215 laptop.

Excellent value for money and is very light which is one of the main positive points for me. The battery life is terrible but this can be said about most laptops as far as I am aware therefore I well recommend the advent 9215. All in all, this laptop is in my favour.

Very easy to use! Great screen and good memory. Great value for money. Very poor battery life! One of the windows system registry's don't function! Advent 9215 is a very good laptop! 9 out of 10!

Advent 9215 laptop is very good value for money, will out-perform £600 laptops, display, wireless, vista etc 10/10. Glossy black finish easy to clean, weight of laptop is fine. I have had item for 4 months no problems at all.