Lenovo says it is retooling its desktop PC portfolio to give customers two new, smaller, lower cost options. Ergo, Lenovo’s new ThinkCentre A58 for small to midsized business (SMB) users and the ThinkCentre M58e, earmarked for midsized to large enterprise workers, will provide the technologies and green features that companies need to stay productive and efficient.
"Customers are feeling the pinch of the challenging economic times, and are demanding PC products that give them the most value for their dollar," said Dilip Bhatia, executive director, global desktop marketing, Lenovo. "We’ve crafted the latest Lenovo ThinkCentre desktops to give them the essential technologies they need to stay productive, reliability features and service plans to stretch their dollar further and security options to protect their business."
For two layers of protection, users could combine Lenovo’s Rescue and Recovery tool included with the desktops to help in recovering and restoring lost files along with Lenovo’s Online Data Backup service to keep data backed-up a secure, off-site location. Preloaded on both desktops, customers could try the service free with up to 5 GB of storage for 90 days.
The new desktops also feature a fingerprint reader on several optional Lenovo keyboards for password management, I/O port disablement to help protect against external threats and a chassis intrusion switch to help detect tampering in the PC.
"Having products priced properly for the market can’t hurt. The reality here is the market has fundamentally changed since the first of the year and the OEMs are struggling with the new, lower cost, reality," explained Rob Enderle, principal analyst, The Enderle Group. "This plays to Lenovo’s strength as a vendor that has a huge presence in markets like India and China which have always had a substantial focus on low priced products. In a way the world has suddenly become much more like India and China have always been and this should play to the strengths of a company that cut its teeth in these markets."
The corporate refresh that many in the industry are holding their breath for has yet to happen. Enderle said the corporate world is stuck waiting for Windows 7 and something that looks like a recovery, but once it comes back it will undoubtedly be looking for the best values.
"Lenovo with ThinkPad has always been one of the preferred vendors if they can, without damaging their reputation for high quality, be seen as one of the better values this could do very nice things for them during the recovery," he said. "In the meantime, it should favor them for whatever market we have until Windows 7 and the recovery cycle begins."
But if ASPs are dropping, doesn’t that do more harm than good to the PC industry over the long term? Enderle said ASPs are dropping like a rock and, historically, once prices go down they don’t come back up.
"They (vendors) are setting new expectations and that is causing margins to constrict sharply. But we have had cycles like this before, granted this is impressively fast and deep, but the PC market is probably about 10 percent of ultimate potential and lower price points, subsidies, and more appliance-like products (which should eventually result from this) could allow the market to grow much closer to potential," he remarked. "There are 3 billion cell phones but only around 300 million PCs that are active in the market, the delta is the potential for future PCs. We may look back and see this event as the catalyst that caused the PC to grow to its true potential."
Stefan Bockhop, director of channel sales, Lenovo Canada, says Lenovo has taken a number of steps to give its partner community a hand given current market conditions.
"These products are moving into our top seller portfolio, so they’ll be able to leverage the existing programs, distributions, and incentives in that portfolio," he said. "By bringing out both models we think we’re offering our partners an entry-level desktop in the A-series . . . and also the M58, that enterprise or mid-market focused box with a slightly higher entry-level price point.
"We think we’re bringing the best of our enterprise practice into the SMB arena and hopefully that’ll help the partners stimulate activities around IT and deployments."
On the subject of an overall corporate refresh, Bockhop suggested, among other things, that the Vista OS didn’t offer as many opportunities or drive as much refresh activities as previous Microsoft OS upgrades have.
"The early news on the Windows 7 beta (is promising); perhaps that’s the next piece," he said. "We’re selling desktops, we’re refreshing products out there, but maybe (organizations) are not doing them en masse or in such large quantities.
Lenovo officials cited Gartner reports that suggested only 13 to 16 percent of the total cost of PC ownership over the lifecycle of the PC comes from initial hardware costs, and the rest are software and ongoing management costs. With this in mind, Lenovo engineered ThinkVantage Technologies on the ThinkCentre M58e and Lenovo Care tools on the ThinkCentre A58, included in the cost of the PC.
Other tools on the desktops such as Rescue and Recovery would help recover and restore files and Power Manager to easily manage and remotely control a PC’s energy usage even when it is turned off. They also include Client Security Solution, Client Security Password Manager. Additionally, the ThinkCentre M58e desktop offers platform stability of up to 15 months for corporate customers who may deploy technology over an extended period of time.
The desktops feature technologies including choices of: Intel Core2Quad and Core2Duo processors, onboard Direct X10 graphics support, support for up to 1TB of storage, up to 4 GB memory, and Blu-Ray or DVD burners.
Lenovo offers a variety of warranty options as well as its ThinkPlus Priority support service plans which give customers 24×7 technical support and priority call routing, among a host of other features and tools.
For complete lifecycle management, Lenovo offers custom imaging and deployment, as well as Asset Recovery Services, a solution that provides for computer take-back, data destruction, refurbishment and recycling. Customers could also recover value from their old PCs which can then be used toward the purchase of new ones.
The starting price of the ThinkCentre A58 in the U.S. is $399 and $499 for the ThinkCentre M58e. -30-