Models and packages

The ThinkCentre A series is versatile, and offers highly customizable systems in three different formfactors. The A61e is the "Ultrasmall" formfactor, measuring only 3"x9"x12", which is roughly the size of a metropolitan phone book. The other members of the A series are a larger desktop formfactor and a mid-tower formfactor. There is little resemblance among the A series models.

Physical design

It's amazing that such a small machine can perform so well without making any serious sacrifices. Some of those non-serious sacrifices are an external power supply (an AC adapter), and limited internal expansion slots for extra hard drives or peripheral cards.

Both the hard drive and the optical drive are SATA, and the motherboard only has two SATA slots, so although there is internal space for another hard drive, it would be impossible to connect all three drives at once.

The ThinkCentre A61e makes no noticeable noise, due to the lack of internal fans. AMD CPUs are notoriously cool-running and don't need the same extraordinary cooling measures that most comparable Intel processors require. The CPU cooling employs a large copper heatsink and heat pipes that run to a rear-mounted 60mm fan -- the only one in the system.

The Lenovo ThinkCentre A61e with a ThinkVision LCD

Sometimes "small" means "fragile" and "difficult to work on." In this instance, none of these things are true. The ThinkCentre A61e is solidly built and extremely easy to disassemble (it's a tool-less disassembly).

The A61e is quite customizable, considering the limitations of the small chassis. On the low end, you can get it with an AMD Sempron processor and 512MB PC2-5300 RAM, and on the high end you can get a top-performing AMD Athlon 64 X2 with 4GB RAM. The memory modules are SO-DIMMs -- the kind used in laptop computers -- so they're a little more expensive than standard desktop DIMMs, but they're half the size and use less electricity.

Speaking of electricity, you can expect the ThinkCentre A61e to consume about 40 kilowatt hours per month, assuming continuous 24/7 operation and frequent heavy use. Compare that to the amount of power a typical desktop system uses and you'll see that the ThinkCentre A61e is not only inexpensive to buy upfront, but quite economical to operate in the long term.

For video, the ThinkCentre A61e has an ATI X1200. That might actually be overkill for this machine, considering it's a business desktop PC. It's certainly inadequate for high-end workstation graphics, but more than capable for any imaginable business desktop function. I was a little disappointed that te video card only has a 15-pin VGA connector. I would prefer to see a DVI port here, especially considering the capabilities of the ThinkVision LCD screen.

The hard drive is a Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 SATA, with storage capacity ranging from 80 to 750GB. You could theoretically fit a second hard drive in this system, but since there are only two SATA connectors on the motherboard, you'd have to disconnect the optical drive.

Speaking of the optical drive, it's a 5.25" SATA DVD-ROM, CDRW/DVD, or CDRW/DVDRW, depending on which option you choose. I was not able to determine the optical drive's brand.

The rest of the chips and peripherals are unremarkable. The motherboard chipset is the AMD 690V, which is not exactly known for its performance. The audio is ATI SoundMax HD with speaker, mic, line-in, and line-out jacks. There are headphone and microphone jacks on the front of the machine, and middling speakers integrated into the front of the machine. Obviously you'd want real desktop speakers if sound is important to you, but the integrated speakers are sufficient for most desktop work. The network chip is a Broadcom NetLink 10/100/1000 -- that's not a brand I like or trust, but at least it works reasonably well in Windows Vista.

In terms of expansion devices, there are two frontpanel USB 2.0 ports and four in the back. If you make a special request at order time, you can also get an ExpressCard slot, a media card reader, and an internal analog modem. There are no PCI slots in the ThinkCentre A61e, so don't count on adding anything fancy to this machine -- it's pretty much as-is for the life of the machine, RAM and drive upgrades aside.

The Lenovo ThinkCentre A61e internals

Putting it to the test

The ThinkCentre A61e is exceptionally easy to set up and configure. Its small size makes it easy to make room on any desk or table, no matter how cluttered it may be.

I tested the ThinkCentre A61e with the display Lenovo recommends -- a ThinkVision L193p 19" LCD. It will go up to 1280x1024 at 75Hz, with an on-to-off response time of 5ms. It has a spring-loaded stand that will let you adjust it up over 4" in height, and about 30 degrees back. It doesn't have any trouble resting on top of the ThinkCentre.

The included Lenovo-brand keyboard and optical mouse were slightly above standard compared to typical low-end options for HP and Dell workstations. They don't compete with high-end ergonomic models from Microsoft or Logitech, but they're pretty good for standard desktop input devices.

Though the sticker on the top of the machine says that the ThinkCentre A61e is designed to work with Windows Vista Basic (the ultra low-end version of Vista that virtually nobody wants to use), it came preloaded with Windows Vista Business, which is in the upper tier of Windows Vista editions. My disappointment with this horribly bloated operating system increased after spending time with it on the ThinkCentre A61e. It was slow, the fonts were jagged, and the extra software that Lenovo added to help manage the system only slowed it down more. Despite the fact that the processor supports 64-bit operating systems, the version of Windows preinstalled on the machine was 32-bit. This limits its memory to 3GB (4GB with the 32-bit limitation gets knocked down to just over 3GB due to addressing problems), and reduces performance on processor-intensive operations. Granted, the ThinkCentre A61e was not designed to do high-end workstation computing, but it's a shame not to let the hardware realize its full potential. On the other hand, given Vista 64-bit's abysmal driver support, perhaps the 32-bit version is the only stable option for this computer.

When the time is measured in seconds, it seems silly to complain about program startup times or the amount of time a user has to wait for certain system functions to complete. However, if you're coming from a highly responsive system and your workflow is tuned for rapid task switching, you're going to really hate this workstation with its default operating system. It's not at all responsive, especially when starting programs or switching among memory- and processor-intensive applications.

To make matters worse, Windows turns off screen font rendering in order to increase performance. This results in fonts that are jagged, difficult to read, and stressful on the eyes. You can manually turn the screen fonts on -- against the advice of the operating system -- but that decreases performance even more. Screen font rendering is a necessity when working with text, so I turned it on to work in Microsoft Word for a while. Word took more than half a minute to start up, with the system totally unresponsive for nearly half that time.

The software problems didn't stop there. I found the Lenovo utilities to be a little confusing to use, and mostly inappropriate for corporate desktop users to deal with. System updates, security settings, and maintenance should be automated tasks that the departmental sysadmin handles. Users should never be responsible for these tasks. Secondly, one of the Lenovo programs wanted to install the Google Toolbar in Internet Explorer. I chose to let it install, and that made Internet Explorer alternately crash and become unresponsive until I manually uninstalled the toolbar.

I didn't do any substantial Linux or BSD testing, but based on the raw hardware stats, I see no reason why any modern Linux distribution or Free/Open/NetBSD release shouldn't work well (though it may not be practical to run any of the BSDs on a business desktop PC). The only potential problem is with the Broadcom gigabit LAN chip, a Tigon 3 derivative that requires updated Linux drivers on many current (as of this writing) distributions. Lenovo maintains a list of certified Linux distributions that work with its systems.

Conclusions and manufacturer recommendations

I'm really impressed with the ThinkCentre A61e in terms of hardware and price, but every level of software it comes with is horrible. You don't want Windows Vista on your business desktop computers. Fortunately there is an option to have Windows XP preinstalled, and though it has many security problems and requires a lot of labor-intensive maintenance, it's definitely a better choice for business productivity.

It's a shame that such great hardware has to be mired by a substandard operating system. This machine performs well and uses little electricity, but like so many other computers on the market today, it does not do well with Windows Vista Business edition. Avoid that operating system and you'll be nothing but pleased with the ThinkCentre A61e's durability, efficiency, performance, and upfront cost.

Here's what I'd like to see in future revisions of this business desktop:

• No Vista. Show me a positive professional opinion of Windows Vista post-beta, especially an opinion that applies to corporate computing. Can't find any? Neither can I. Ditch Vista -- it's ruining the ThinkCentre's reputation.
• A 64-bit operating system. Even if the OS must be Vista, clinging to the 32-bit version is an undesirable habit. Manufacturers are terrified of 64-bit software for reasons that I may never fully understand. An OEM that embraces 64-bit desktop computing is fully future-proof and forward-thinking.
• DVI instead of SVGA. The ThinkVision monitors are great, but they're really designed for DVI, not SVGA. How hard could it be to make the integrated graphics card output to DVI?
• Linux preinstalled as an option. Linux is an ideal desktop operating system for a business machine, especially if you go with one of the major corporate desktop distros from Novell, Red Hat, or Mandriva. I'd like to see this as an advertised option -- not some back room "if you request it on the phone" option with no guarantees. Windows XP is dying and Windows Vista is a failure. It's time to start exploring more reliable, better-performing, future-proof operating system choices.

Device	Business Desktop PC
Manufacturer	Lenovo
Device support	Six USB 2.0; standard PS/2 keyboard and mouse; 15-pin VGA; 10/100/1000 Ethernet; speaker, mic, line in/out jacks; two SATA ports; two SO-DIMM slots; internal space for two 3.5" and one 5.25" drives; optional ExpressCard and media card reader
Market	Businesses of any size
Price (retail)	U.S. ~$400-1100 depending on configuration ($1100 as tested for this review)
Previous version	N/A
Product Web site	Click here