Lenovo Essential H320 Desktop Review

Specifications: 

Operating system: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bitProcessor: Intel Core i5-650 @ 3.20GHz Memory: 6GB DDR3 PC3-8500 SDRAMHard drive: 640GB SATA2 @ 7200 RPMOptical drive: Blu-ray ROM / DVD+/-RW burnerGraphics: NVIDIA GeForce 310Wireless networking: none Networking: Gigabit EthernetWarranty: One-year limited parts and labor

What’s in the box:

Lenovo Essential H Series H320 desktopUSB wired mousePS/2 wired keyboardPower cordDocumentation

The Lenovo H320 space-saving desktop starts at a reasonable $599 price point; this review unit was configured slightly higher and carries a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $699.  

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Build and design
Lenovo has been pumping desktop designs in a manner akin to cooking spaghetti these last few years: throw everything into a pot, stir it around for a bit, then pull something out and toss it at a wall to see what sticks.  The Essential series is one such innovation to come from the Chinese computer giant’s design resurgence; they’re focused on more affordable feature-centric, rather than design-centric, computers.

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That’s not to say that the H320 is poorly designed; far from it, in fact. This little desktop was born with efficiency in mind, and it lives up to those expectations by taking up the least amount of room possible on your work surface.

Lenovo has definitely taken a page of out other manufacturers’ books; the H320 looks almost - but not quite identical - to offerings from other companies like HP and Gateway (Acer). While that’s not completely their fault since at a certain point, all of these slim tower desktops start to look the same, they could have tried a new approach.  Apple and Dell, for example, both have very small desktops that offer greater-than-nettop performance.

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As with most of these slim desktops, the optical drive is mounted vertically on the front of the machine, hidden behind a glossy black plastic door.  The whole front is covered with this glossy black plastic, offering a seamless - if easily scratchable - look. 

Both of the sides are largely featureless, save for a few strategically-placed vents.  If would be nice if Lenovo had included some sort of support stand on at least one side for those users who would prefer to lay the desktop horizontally rather than vertically.

Inputs and expansion
The front of the H320 features the vertically oriented optical drive, as mentioned previously.  As a nice bonus, Lenovo managed to squeeze in a Blu-ray read / DVD-writable drive.  There are two USB 2.0 ports on the bottom, as well as the usual pair of analog audio jacks for line-in and headphone-out signals.  A multi-card memory card reader sits next to the unit’s power button on top, rounding the complement of front-facing ports.

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As always, the rear of the machine is where the real action is.  On the H320, Lenovo included just four more USB 2.0 ports; it’s a shame there aren’t more.  There’s also three analog audio jacks for line-in, line-out and microphone-in audio sources. 

Gigabit Ethernet takes care of all of the networking, and two PS/2 peripheral ports sit at the top.  The H320 comes with a USB wired mouse and, perplexingly, a PS/2 wired keyboard. It’s long past time for PS/2 ports to be entirely phased out in a consumer desktop (they have their place in a business-focused unit) and it would be nice to see Lenovo just leave them out in favor of USB for the next interation.

[click to view image]By default the Lenovo Essential H320 comes with a VGA and an HDMI video port.  What’s great is that these are native to the motherboard; even if users buy a basic model with Intel’s Graphics HD Media Accelerator HM55 integrated GPU, they’ll be able to hook up to an external display (like an HDTV) with a purely digital connection.

For those who upgrade to a discrete GPU like the NVIDIA GeForce 310 in this review unit, there’s an extra one each VGA and HDMI video ports on the card.  The only downside is that the video ports on the card and the video ports on the motherboard can’t be used simultaneously, which is actually a common problem on desktops such as this one.

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[click to view image]Lenovo should really put port guards over the top of the integrated video ports when they can’t be used (such as when a discrete graphics card is configured) like other manufacturers do; it’s a cheap and easy way to help cut down on customer confusion and dissatisfaction.

Inside of the machine, there isn’t much space for users to tinker around. The RAM slots are already pre-populated with the included 6GB of RAM, and there are no open 5.25- or 3.5-inch bays.  This review unit had its 16x PCI-Express slot filled with the discrete graphics card, but there is one 1x slot still available. 

On H320 units that do not come with an upgraded graphics card, there will be two open slots and users could upgrade them as they see fit.  It’s worth noting, however, that the slim design of the case will require a “half-height” expansion card in order to fit.

Performance
Despite packing everything into a box about the size of a case of soda, Lenovo managed to include sufficient performance to handle all but the most demanding of users.  

Intel’s quad-core Core i5 CPU is up to any reasonable task, including Photoshop and lightweight audio and video editing - it’s easy to see Lenovo’s H320 becoming a slim addition to a media enthusiast’s workflow.

wPrime benchmark test results: (lower is better)

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PCMark05 system benchmark test results: (higher is better)

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PCMark Vantage system benchmark test results: (higher is better)

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3DMark06 graphics benchmark test results: (higher is better)The NVIDIA GeForce 310 is a bit of a letdown.  It’s certainly capable, in its own right, but it won’t be setting any kind of records.  For users who just need that slightest extra bit of oomph that the Intel integrated graphics solutions are unable to offer, the dedicated option is a worthy consideration.  Unless a customer is absolutely sure they need it, however, it may be worth looking at alternative upgrades - like adding more RAM or a bigger hard drive.

CrystalDiskMark storage benchmark results: (higher is better)

Speaking of hard drives, at least the H320 offers a modern, reasonably quiet hard drive that reaches above 100MB/s in sustained transfer tests.

Power and noise
The Lenovo H320 offers a fairly high degree of power efficiency - something toward which Lenovo has been working for several years, now. It’s clear that their hard work is starting to pay off, since the H320 manages to come in with an idle power draw of just 39 watts.  

That’s a very respectable number, considering most desktops who go past it are built with several laptop components as means of keeping cooking and cost under control. Peak power draw at boot was 58 watts, while maxing out the system drew 97W.

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Intel Building $5 Billion, 14nm Fabrication Plant in Arizona

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Despite the fact that seventy-five percent of Intel's CPU sales come from outside of the United States these days, the chip giant fabricates that same amount inside the U.S. To help with that effort, Intel is constructing Fab 42, a new 14nm plant, in Arizona.

The new facility, which is expected to cost Intel more than $5 billion over the course of its construction, will create thousands of construction and manufacturing jobs as its built and comes online.

Although construction will begin sometime this summer, the fabrication plan isn't expected to fully come online until 2013. When it does, Intel will use it to construct chips on a 14nm manufacturing process.

That means that each CPU will possess transistors as small as 14nm - or a little over one six thousandth the width of a human hair.

Shrinking transistors and CPUs is one way companies can reduce power draw, and send some of their clock speeds skyrocketing.

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IBM Supercomputer Crushes Feeble Human Minds

Yes, IBM's supercomputer Watson creamed both the famous 74-day champ Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, the all-time highest money champ in a very special Jeopardy edition. But that doesn't mean there weren't moments during the show that the IBM research team involved in the Watson project wasn't sweating Watson's answers.

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In fact, one of the final Jeopardy clues during the 3-day-long session read, "Its largest airport is named for a World War II Hero; its second largest, for a World War II battle" in the category of "U.S. Cities" and each of the human contestants answered "What is Chicago?" while Watson answered "What is Toronto?????" IBM rsearchers hung their heads and grinned.

[click to view image]Even though it seems funny to most people, somewhere deep in Watson's programming, Watson had deduced that this was the best answer to the clue, even though Watson was not very sure at all of its answer (and IBM reminds us that there are many U.S. cities actually named Toronto).

IBM also explained part of the reason for the error is because Watson was trained to "learn" to downplay the significance of category names and titles; to know that category titles only weakly suggest a real answer.

When Watson defeated the human contestants, some of the IBM research team even started to cry -- finally, their hard work had paid off. In the end, Watson's final score was $41,413. Jennings placed second with $19,200, and Rutter placed third with $11,200.

IBM has created a supercomputer that can process human language, but it is still a work in progress.

Computers may not be able to feel human emotion or detect sarcasm/inflection of voice that well, but programmers at IBM know that they can at least build supercomputers to succeed over a trained human mind at logical thinking and reasoning, as we have seen in this Jeopardy challenge. And now they will be useful in more than just Jeopardy gameshows.

Looking toward the future, IBM strives to apply the Watson technology to healthcare, and more specifically to medicine. IBM hopes to use Watson to take patient information and apply logical programmed analysis to diagnose and come up with the best treatments and outcomes within mere seconds.

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It is estimated that already one out of two doctors in the U.S. use software from a company called Nuance Communications to apply and help make sense of patient information via the spoken word and turn it into data and text outcomes. IBM now hopes for Watson to be able to revolutionize this field even more by applying ground-breaking technology that is accurate enough to process a database of every medical resource available and choose the best outcomes. Stay tuned to IBM for answers.

The $1 million winnings from this special Jeopardy challenge were donated by IBM to a children's World Vision charity. 

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Dead Space 2 Review

Genre: Third-person survival horrorESRB rating: MaturePlatform availability: PC, PS3, Xbox 360Publisher: EADeveloper: Visceral GamesMinimum requirements (PC): Windows XP, 2.8GHz CPU, 1GB RAM, 8x ODD, 10GB free HDD space, NVIDIA GeForce 6800 or ATI X1600 ProPrice: $59.95

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If you can hear me, run
The original Dead Space introduced engineer Isaac Clarke, a man who probably wishes he’d picked a different profession. For those who haven’t played it, the story is set several hundred years into Earth’s future. A dystopian tale, it’s a place where continuously growing populations have extracted all the natural resources possible from the planet.  

Discovery and subsequent derivation of the unified field theory granted control of gravity itself to humanity, and the concept of planet cracking was born. Huge ships find planets ripe with raw materials, split them into huge chunks and process the resultant ore, bringing it back with them to Earth.

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The USG Ishimura, out on a routine planet cracking mission, goes unexpectedly dark. A crew is sent to find out what happened and, if necessary, repair the issue. Isaac is a member of this maintenance team, eager to get to work - his/your girlfriend is stationed aboard the Ishimura, and she’s there mostly thanks to prodding from Clarke.

You can probably tell how things go.

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When the crew gets on board, the situation spirals rapidly from bad to worst (this is not a typo) as horrific creatures known as necromorphs attack. 

Necromorphs, which are the main encounter in both Dead Space games, are perversions crafted from the dead crewmembers. Created by a discovered alien artifact, the Marker, they’re tough, crazy, and out to do one thing: kill you.

EA launched an effective - if critically panned - advertisement
campaign that used moms' disapproval to showcase the game.

Rise and shine
Dead Space 2 opens with our unfortunate engineer waking on an unknown space station three years later. One of the best parts of Dead Space 2 is Isaac Clarke’s humanity: he isn’t possessed of some kind of superhuman sanity. The events of the first game have broken him, leaving him infected with a progressively worsening dementia that threatens to kill him if he doesn’t receive treatment.

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As the game moves forward, the dementia manifests with auditory and visual hallucinations, seeing creatures that aren’t there, hearing people talk when rooms are empty and, least comforting of all, nightmarish recollections of his dead girlfriend mixing with guilt over effectively - and completely unintentionally - sending her to her death.

From the first minutes of the game, Clarke is trying to reach a mysterious woman who promises that she can cure him. The dementia plays an important part of the story; only you, as the player, gets to see just how crazy he becomes. You soon discover that you’ve been kept mostly unaware for three years as a scientist tries to cure you.

Instead, he succumbs to the madness himself and builds a new Marker - bringing the necromorphs.

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Necromorphs attack when you most - and when you least - expect it.  Anyone who’s played survival horror mainstays such as Resident Evil has had that moment, happily playing the game...

...alone...

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...in the dark...

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...when all of a sudden, a creature comes flying out of the darkness and it’s very scaRY AND YOU SHRIEK A LITTLE BIT.

Not that that ever happened here, of course, but it’s worth keeping in mind if you have a faint constitution or perhaps a heart condition.

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Joking aside, the game gets a bit scary at times, in all the best ways. Visceral Games, Dead Space 2’s developer, did an excellent job at filling in all the little details. The walls have posters, charts, medical graphs and clipboards. The labs have centrifuges and other realistic equipment.

[click to view image]In other words, Dead Space 2 feels like it could be a real setting - minus, thankfully, that whole necromorph thing - and that just makes it creepier.

Being an engineer comes in handy
Weapons and armor are often collected as plans, which Clarke can then build out when he reaches a shop kiosk somewhere on the station. At a bench station, equipment can be modified or upgraded with power nodes collected from various locations. Being an engineer comes in handy, as Clarke can slot power nodes into a predefined chart reminiscent of some of the level up tables from newer Final Fantasy games.

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New suits and weapons can be unlocked at various stages throughout the game - and these bonuses are kept upon completion, which adds a great deal to the game’s replayability. Speaking of replayability, once the game is beaten on any difficulty level, the Hardcore option is unlocked - and is it ever apt. Everything is tougher, upgrades and health packs are few and far between and if you die, you start over from wherever you last saved.

In this mode, you can also only save three times. In the whole game. That’s pretty hardcore.

Of course, no good survival horror game is complete without its horrible inhabitants, and the previously mentioned necromorphs fill that role admirably. Unexpectedly tough, these guys can’t be brought down with a crack head shot, or a couple of rounds delivered to the chest.

Instead, the necromorphs have to be brought down with speed and guile, as players proceed to rip them limb from limb[click to view image]. Once a necromorph goes down, Clarke must run and stomp it to goo - or risk having it get back up and attack again.

Some of the best moments of the game come with the myriad and creative ways to kill the things, ranging from steadily picking off each limb from afar before going and stomping it to death, to telekinetically lifting a projectile that hurtles through the air to pin one to the wall.

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Netgear Unveils New 3G and 4G Routers

Netgear introduced a new line of 3G and LTE (4G) broadband-like performing routers in a mobile package at the Mobile World Congress on Feb. 14. There are four new routers in all and according to Netgear, all of them take features from Netgear's best wired routers and let users drop in their 3G and 4G cellular service.

[click to view image]Each of the new models will possess either 3G or LTE, will have failover to wired 10/100 Fast Ethernet WAN, FE LAN, and Wi-Fi 802.11N. 

The new line includes:

MBR1200, Quadband 3G HSPA+  21Mbps x 5.76Mbps HSPA fallback and failover to wired FE WANDual WAN (one more 10/100 FE port)4 - 10/100 Ethernet LAN PortsMBR1310, Quadband 3G DC-HSPA+  42Mbps x 5.7Mbps HSPA+/HSPA fallback and failover to wired FE WANDual WAN (one more 10/100 FE port)4 - 10/100 Ethernet LAN PortsMBR1517 European LTE  100Mbps x 50Mbps HSPA+/HSPA fallback and failover to wired FE WANInternal broadband wireless modem Both 3G (CDMA/HSPA/HSPA+) and LTE (4G) models availableDual WAN (one more 10/100 FE port)4 - 10/100 Ethernet LAN PortsAdditional security features MBR2000 Quadband 3G DC-HSPA+  42Mbps x 5.7Mbps HSPA+/HSPA fallback and failover to ADSL2+Internal broadband wireless modem 3G (CDMA/HSPA/HSPA+) and LTE (3G) availableDual WAN (one more ADSL2+ port)4 - 10/100 Ethernet LAN PortsThe models have internal high gain antennas and an optional external antenna for places where the signal is poor and some of the models include special high security features. 
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OCZ Unveils Vertex 3 SATA III SSDs with Brand New Processors

OCZ unveiled its new 6Gbps Vertex 3 series lineup of 2.5" solid state drives with the SATA III interface yesterday, promising that the new lineup has double the performance of the last generation SSDs. The series will come in several different capacities with the highest featuring up to 400GB.

[click to view image]The Vertex 3 offers users the new second generation SandForce SF-2200 SSD processor, which was also released yesterday, along with the SF-2100. The processor can handle up to 550MBps read and 500MBps write transfer rates and was benchmarked to handle up to 60,000 input-output operations per second with 4k random write.

Also launching along with the series is the enterprise Vertex 3 Pro SATA III SSDs for higher-end performance. The Pro line has a second generation enterprise SandForce SF-2500 processor and multi-level cell implementation. 

The Vertex 3 series will be displayed next week at the international telecommunications, digital media, and consumer electronic CeBIT global conferences event in Germany. 

Vertex 3 will be available from OCZ after the CeBIT event in 120GB and 240GB capacities. The Vertex Pro will come in 100GB, 200GB, and 400GB capacities. Exact product dimensions are 99.8 x 69.63 x 9.3mm. Every capacity will include TRIM support/command.

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Lenovo Preps to Overtake Apple in the All-in-one Market

Lenovo's ThinkCentre and especially its IdeaCentre lines of All-in-One PCs have bridged most of the competition in the AIO market and now they have a chance to compete against the governing power of Apple for the number one spot internationally, many industry sources stated on Monday.

[click to view image]A large contributing factor to Lenovo's emergence into this spot in 2010 is due to a fast-growing PC market in China. In 2010, Apple held 30 percent of the entire AIO market share but Lenovo saw a 23 percent growth to 4.22 million units in Q4, mostly due to a large spike in the sales of the Lenovo AIOs.

Digitimes has forecasted that Lenovo AIO shipments will grow by 54 percent in 2011 alone, rising to around two million PCs based on what was seen in its home market of China. 

It has also been forecasted by Digitimes that Apple will have a 15 percent increase of its shipments of AIOs to around 4.6 million in 2011 in the same time frame as Lenovo's estimated growth.

Other manufacturers have been trying to force their brands through the North American AIO market by driving the sales of their own models, but Apple still has a tight hold on the market at 75-80 percent, sources have illustrated. It looks as though Apple will still have an intense grip-tight monopoly in the United States for this year even though Lenovo has bridged the gap in this market between other brands and Apple.

Lenovo will forge ahead and continue to outsource many of its AIOs from China to a number of Taiwan and Singapore-based ODMs such as Compal Electronics, Flextronics International, Quanta Computer, Inventec and Wistron, sources have indicated.

The Lenovo IdeaCentre line has been known to be a direct competitor to Apple iMacs, targeting the same types of buyers for some of the same reasons for as low as a third of the Apple price in some instances. Even though Lenovo has a much wider selection and a better price tag, Apple has instead gone the way of quality of features and performance of the systems.

electronista

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