Advent is one of the few companies to produce a range of all-in-one PCs, a segment of the market that has seen a marked increase in momentum over the last couple of years thanks mainly to the introduction of the “net-top”; effectively these are desktop PCs based on the innards of netbooks.

One of the company's latest is the AIO-101, which looks identical to the AIO-100 we reviewed earlier this year, but instead of using Intel's Atom processor it uses AMD power.

Just like its AIO-1xx siblings, the AIO-101 is designed in two parts - the base unit and the screen - which are joined by a single, shiny chrome, adjustable strut which isn't the strongest in the world so some care needs to be taken with it. It can raise or lower the screen by around 8cm while the screen itself can be tilted up to 90 degrees vertically. Both the base unit and the 18.4-inch screen look the part, with nice curved edge designs and the now seemingly standard gloss piano black finish.

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AMD-powered all-in-ones are rarer than AMD standard desktop PCs, so it makes a nice change to be able to have a look at one. The AIO-101 uses a low voltage Athlon X2 3250e which is a 65nm dual core chip clocked at 1.55GHz and a TDP of just 22W. Backed by 4GB of 800MHz DDR2 memory, all of this means that the AIO-101 has a bit more grunt than its Atom-powered sibling, while at the same time being nearly as energy efficient.

Whereas the AIO-100 had to make do with a 160GB hard drive, the AIO-101 comes with twice as much storage space with a 320GB drive; handy, as it also comes with a built-in AVerMedia analogue / DV-T TV tuner and you'll need a lot of space for all those recorded programmes.

It has a better feature list than, say MSI's Wind Top, as in addition to the TV tuner there are four USB ports, a DVI out port, eSATA, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, a DVD burner and a 3-in-1 card reader. It also comes with Windows Vista Home Premium installed.

The 18.4-inch screen with its 1,680 by 945-pixel native resolution is very good but it does suffer from having a glossy coating, which makes it a pain to use in bright lighting conditions due to all the reflections. The screen is powered by an ATI Radeon HD3200 graphics chip which isn't going to impress with its gaming capabilities but has enough grunt to play HD movies.

Advent's AIO-101 sits neatly in between net-tops and the more powerful all-in-ones fitted with standard desktop technology, and would be ideal for people who are suffering from a combination of a tight budget and restricted desk space, and just need something to do the basics well.