That oft-quoted phrase "you have never had it so good" could certainly be used to describe today's notebook market, with even some sub-£400 laptops having the same feature set as last year's £1,000 machines. And the trend is set to continue as technology prices fall. One of the latest to join the throng at the value end is from Advent, with the 7113, which remarkably includes Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium in its £400 price tag.

Helping to keep the price in check is the choice of processor. Intel's Celeron M 430 isn't going to win any awards in the performance stakes, being clocked at just 1.73GHz, but it gets the job done and at the end of the day that's all that matters to many people. It is helped along by 1GB of DDR2 memory which is the minimum amount to get Vista up and running.

Similarly, the graphics performance isn't any thing to shout about as it's powered by Intel's integrated GMA950 solution, so serious games playing is out, but on the plus side it's perfectly useable for office applications and powerful enough to run Vista's Aero interface.

Despite the low price the build quality is good, the chassis is rigid enough and even the lid shows little flex, protecting the 15.4-inch widescreen display. The screen has a native resolution of 1,280 by 800 pixels and comes with a glossy coating, although the viewing angles are not that great.

There's an 80GB hard drive for storage and a multi-format DVD burner for backing up files onto. Also provided are three USB ports and an ExpressCard slot, but it's disappointing to note the omission of a media card reader, which would have been more useful than the ExpressCard slot at the present time. Also missing is a FireWire port.

To connect to the outside world the 7113 comes with 10/100Mbps LAN, a modem and 802.11a/b/g wireless which can be switched on or off to save battery life. Talking of battery life, the 7113 only gave around an hour's usage under test conditions: very disappointing, but when the battery was inspected it was found to be only a meagre 2,000mAh unit, which is about half the capacity of the usual run of laptop batteries we see.

The choice of Windows Vista Home Premium at this price is frankly stunning, as for this money you would expect to get just Home Basic. So you get all the advantages Premium has over Basic; Live Preview, Mobility Center and more importantly, Media Center Edition, the Aero interface and backups that can be scheduled. The Advent 7113 comes with a year's warranty.

If you're looking for a cheap, no-frills laptop, then keep an eye out in your local PC World, as at this price with Vista Home Premium included, it won't stay on the shelves for long.