Advent-ures of the 4211

bigpoppa

So picked up an advent 4211 (pc world branded MSI wind) and it is superb. Looked at eee pc and much preferred the advent due to screen size and keyboard.

The point of this post is that for most users (like me) you will need to do two things out of the box. I say this after extensive research mostly on the superb misforums

1) update bios to fix known issues. This update once run results in the keyboard not working until you remove the battery and reboot.

2) More importantly it refused to get an ip address from my eircom router ? Again a search led to download a realtek wifi tool and problem solved when this was used instead of windows wireless config.

Love the machine now but good luck to average punter buying one !

Brian

Would you not have considered the EEE 1000H?

ytareh

The 1000H is a lot dearer (50-100?-4211 is 379 in PC World)I had to update the wireless card's drivers/software AND change the channel(pick a low number 1-4 ish) on my router to get it to connect reliably to Broadband.I didnt do the BIOS update as I didnt have a USB DVD drive or floppy ...Looked a bit scarey anyway and I HAVE done BIOS flashes before .As stated this is a great machine but not for the complete beginner .Even turning on the wireless card out of the box takes a press of two buttons FN and F9 or something...The 1000H and EEEs ingeneral are great but you cant justify paying MORE for one of them as the 4211 is a serious laptop replacement full stop not just a netbook....It can even play some oldish games like eg Defcon.

parsi

Mine worked fine out of the box. No need to flute around with bios upgrades, wifi or routers.

Added a stick of ram yesterday without probs.

ytareh

Ours worked fine for a month almost too....THEN had to 'flute around' ...dont be too smug just yet!

chris85

parsi wrote: »

Mine worked fine out of the box. No need to flute around with bios upgrades, wifi or routers.

Added a stick of ram yesterday without probs.

I heard that voids the warranty, do you know if this is true?

Ive had mine about three weeks and no problems at all so far.

machalla

ytareh wrote: »

The 1000H and EEEs ingeneral are great but you cant justify paying MORE for one of them as the 4211 is a serious laptop replacement full stop not just a netbook....It can even play some oldish games like eg Defcon.

??? Not just a netbook ???

The Advent is definitively a netbook as is the EEE 1000H.

Fair enough the 1000h is more expensive but you can definitely replace the ram and hard-disk on it without voiding the warranty. Everything I've heard about the Advent (which is a copy of the MSI wind another definite Netbook) is that you can't upgrade the machine without voiding the warranty. Not worth it to the average user but for me it was worth it.

In terms of games on the 1000h check here for some suggestions.

http://www.bourdeaux.net/eeepc/

I've been happily enough playing Dawn of War Soulstorm on it over the last few days. Not perfect graphics but functional and it works. Loads of other older games work fine. Note I have 2Gb of Ram in this machine.

chris85

machalla wrote: »

??? Not just a netbook ???

The Advent is definitively a netbook as is the EEE 1000H.

Fair enough the 1000h is more expensive but you can definitely replace the ram and hard-disk on it without voiding the warranty. Everything I've heard about the Advent (which is a copy of the MSI wind another definite Netbook) is that you can't upgrade the machine without voiding the warranty. Not worth it to the average user but for me it was worth it.

In terms of games on the 1000h check here for some suggestions.

http://www.bourdeaux.net/eeepc/

I've been happily enough playing Dawn of War Soulstorm on it over the last few days. Not perfect graphics but functional and it works. Loads of other older games work fine. Note I have 2Gb of Ram in this machine.

I agree the 1000H is the more powerful machine and its annoying that upgrading the advent is difficult to do without voiding warranty (ive heard there are authorised people to do this)

Brian

The Advent/Wind can be upgraded without voiding the warranty. What you have to do is contact MSI, and they'll send you a replacement sticker for the seal that you have to break for accessing the RAM. This is assuming that Ireland comes under the jurisdiction of MSI UK.. check out msiwind.net for more info anyway.

With regard to the 1000H's price discrepancy, there is of course the factor that the 1000H includes a 6-Cell battery which gets 5-6 hours, as opposed to the Advent's 3-Cell which gets about 2 hours. The 1000H also has a larger, multi-touch trackpad, Dolby Sound Room speakers, 802.11n wireless, and better build quality - particularly in relation to the Advent/Wind's screen wobble issue. Of course, the Wind looks better.

parsi

The Advent doesn't have a seal that is broken when you add memory so unless you scratch the screws (or leave the ram in) they won't know if you've been modding the device.

Having said that it may be an idea to proceed with the mindset that warranty will be voided but _some_ fora seem to suggest that it won't - based on someone having a phonecall with an unknown person in PC World (that's cast iron....)