And it's gone....

The little Advent lasted just 3 days since its visit to PC World - and is now gone.

I came downstairs on Friday morning to discover a shut-down box. Again.

This time, a bit of Googling garnered me some evidence that I wasn't alone in experiencing problems with this box. This link is just ONE of the mentions of the problem I found.

I called PC World, who (at first) asked me to bring it in for further tests. However, I explained the evidence, pointed their Tech Guys team leader at the relevant pages....and got a callback an hour later confirming that they would simply take a return for a full store credit.

So the Advent went back, and has been replaced by a Compaq C757EA, as the price for a dual-core with 2GB RAM was just too good to miss. I also treated myself to an Archos 504 80GB PMP, which will be useful for my trip to Romania this month.

(For those who are shocked at my choosing Archos - I looked at the iPod Touch, but for £20 more than the Archos it's a tenth of the storage and, according to the owner of the one I was fiddling with, won't play Divx - which would make it completely useless for my purposes.)

Overall, then, I have to say I'm not displeased with the service and response from PC World on this. And I feel like I've got a heck of a lot more for my money than I had originally!

So to those who asked for my opinions or advice on the Advent 8212 - my advice is just DON'T. It's not DSG's fault - but the components and the mainboard appear to have known issues and, quite frankly, it's not worth the money you'll pay for it.