Hi there,

I'm looking at buying a new 17 inch laptop (needs to be graphics-software suited). I have a few in mind, the Sony VGN-BX197XP, the Toshiba Satellite M60-164 and Toshiba QOSMIO G20-126 or the Advent 7080.

I've managed to find some useful reviews on all but the Advent. Any idea as to whether Advent are a good make and worth the £1000 that Dixons are quoting? It seems like it has everything that I want but I'm not sure if the cost is simply too good to be true - I'd never even heard of Advent until recently. Any help would be much appreciated!

My ideal spec: 17inch, high res, 80GB+ Hard drive, 1GB RAM, 1860mhz+ processor speed, WiFi, DVD/CD-RW, good battery life, under £2000!! Not too bothered about the additional "entertainment" features such as TV etc - I already have these on my Sony Vaio desktop.

email cath dot embley at dsl dot pipex dot com

Thanks

I recently bought an Advent laptop for about £500 from PC World. Advent is the own brand for PC World/Dixons. The spec is 2.8GHz Athlon, 500M RAM large hard disc and DVD writer as well as WiFi. So far it has worked very well.
However, if you really want a reliable machine, have you considered IBM? Their machines are proverbially well made and you should be able to get someting for £2000.

This laptop, from what i believe, is the same as the ECS 910.

http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWeb/Products/ProductsDetail.aspx?CategoryID=3&TypeID=27&DetailID=535&MenuID=18&LanID=8

It has just been re-named as the Advent 7080.

I would agree that the ecs 910 and Advent 7080 are the same...my 7080 crashed and I was short of the drivers....the ones off the ECS site worked in most cases. some were not so good but they updated when I loaded updates from the windows web site.......nothing there to update the windows site was no use....something there to update.....hey presto!!!!!