Lenovo’s new office PC doesn’t need any floor space to deploy
Having seen plenty of amazingly small PCs in the past few years, my first reaction to Lenonvo’s ThinkCentre M73 Tiny Desktop is that it isn’t the smallest PC I’ve seen. However, compared with a standard ATX case, the M73 Tiny is small enough to be VESA mounted to a monitor, or placed out of view on the side or back of a desk.
The chassis measures 338 x 385 x 100mm, and inside that chassis is kit to fulfil the requirements for typical office computing tasks using the Windows platform. Out of the box you get the diminutive machine, mouse and keyboard – so you need either a VGA or DisplayPort monitor to make it fully operational. Lenovo has preinstalled Windows 7 Pro 64-bit by downgrading from Windows 8.1 Pro, should you ever wish to embrace that platform.
What’s inside the M73 can vary rather wildly depending on how much cash you part with. The review machine used a reasonably powerful 3GHz Core i3-4150T Processor, 4GB of DDR3 memory and a 500GB hybrid drive. Lenovo offers a wide range of customisations, though, that can take this machine all the way up to a Core i7-4785T processor, 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. They also offer SSD drives, though curiously only up to 256GB in size.
The cheapest version uses a Celeron G1840T CPU, 4GB of RAM and a 320GB hard drive, and is available for just £294. That’s a very competitive price when you consider that it includes Windows – with a potential upgrade to version 10 by default.
Those thinking of potential hardware upgrades to RAM or storage are warned off by a large red sticker that Lenovo placed on a case seam marked ‘Seal Sticker – DO NOT REMOVE’. There was me thinking that thinking like that went the out with the Dodo, but apparently not at Lenovo. Beyond the warranty invalidating sticker there are probably some upgrade options, I’d guess.
Continuing the days-of-computing-past theme, Lenovo also kindly pre-crapped the machine with all manner of software detritus including the truly insidious Norton Security – an antivirus product that’s first job is to inform you that your PC is defenceless, before a rapid segue into how you should pay them to better control this panic-inducing tool. My advice would be to remove it immediately and put something free on before it gets too comfortable, ignoring its protestations.
The M73 generally works much better once this software is replaced with an alternative, and further improvements can be gained by deleting some of the other entirely superfluous items that aren’t part of Windows by default. Once fully decluttered, the performance of this machine is very impressive given its relative diminutive size and a cooling system that’s mostly passive. The metal case can get warm when it’s been worked hard, but not worryingly so.
The external power block is one of Lenovo’s ‘New Power’ Energy Start 5.2-rated products that it's using on the ThinkPad line, and it generates the 65 watts, more than the M73 Tiny could conceivably use.
It scored a very respectable 3557 in the PCMark 8 Work 2.0 test, slightly above a mobile Core i5-4200 laptop I recently tested for the magazine. Unless you’re a software developer or database cruncher, then this is great performance – and more than adequate for day-to-day work and web tasks. It’s never going to be the choice of hardcore gamers, but that’s not the market that Lenovo are targeting here.
The strengths of this design is that Lenovo will provide it with Windows 7, what businesses actually want, and the machine is appropriately toughened for the rigors of office user. Metal trumps plastic in this respect; always. My only reservations about this hardware design are the video port selections, where Lenovo gave it DisplayPort instead of either DVI or HDMI. That makes little obvious sense in a business context, as DisplayPort isn’t a technology that has pervaded general office use.
Other than that point, this is a very serviceable piece of equipment that would work well in many offices that aren’t spacious enough to entertain floor standing computers. Indeed, deploying ten of these to the top floor of an office would require much less physical effort than an equivalent full desktop solution.
As I expected, Lenovo delivers a price-sensitive solution with M73 Tiny Desktop that many IT departments will see great value in using. Mark Pickavance
A tough little box of Office PC power.
Features
• Intel Core i3-4150T Processor( 3.00GHz, 1600MHz, 3MB)
• Windows 7 Professional 64 pre-installed (through downgrade rights in Windows 8.1 Pro 64)
• 4.0GB DDR3 1600 MHz
• 500GB + 8GB 5400 rpm hard drive
• Intel 7260 b/g/n Wireless (2x2 BGN)
• Bluetooth Version 4.0
• Three-year warranty
• USB Optical Mouse and Keyboard included