Dixons' own PC brand, Advent, is having a go at taking on Apple MacBook Air. While the skinny Altro won't beat the Air on thinness, it does have it licked on price.

Advent's Altro: Air-alike

The metal-cased Altro will retail for £600 - rather less than the £1149 Apple want for the entry-level Air. That's said you don't get as powerful a specification with the Advent machine: just a dual-core Celeron ultra-low voltage CPU of undisclosed frequency, 3GB of memory and a 120GB hard drive.

Like the Air, the Altro has a 13.3in display and no optical drive.

MFC, HDMI, headphone and USB ports... and that's it

From the snaps, it's clear the Altro has an HDMI port, one USB connector and a headphone socket. There's a fourth port, labelled MFC, which presumably hooks up the "port replicator" Advent mentions in its blurb. Surely it would have been better to add one the replicator's two USB port to the Altro in place of the MFC?

The Altro comes with Windows Vista Home Premium, but includes a free upgrade to Windows 7 Premium.

Low price, but low spec

If the spec's not sufficient for you, Advent will also release the Altro Elite, which swaps out the Celeron processor for a Core 2 Solo. It also has a "premium flush glass finish" over the display. The Elite will cost £800 when both machines go on sale on 24 August. ®