Lenovo ThinkCentre M51

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For corporate environments where reliability and security are the most important issues when rolling out new desktops, Lenovo is hard to overlook. Its range of ThinkCentre M51 desktops incorporate hardware user authentication via Lenovo's Embedded Security Subsystem 2.0 and Client Security Software wizard, which aims to protect your data from local and remote unauthorised access. It supports data encryption on-the-fly and can be used in conjunction with an optional smart card or fingerprint reader for extra security. It also features Lenovo's Rescue and Recovery suite, which is a set of programs that can restore the desktop and back up data through a very intuitive user interface.

Pros

  • Solid security

Cons

  • Less than stellar performance

Bottom Line

This machine is sluggish when it comes to business application performance, but it has excellent provisions for security, and its data backup software is very simple to use. We think the unit is way too big for what it is though, and think it could either be built smaller or even turned into a tower.

Would you buy this?

  • Price

    $ 2,049.00 (AUD)

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Physically, the M51 is a desktop (not a tower) that occupies a large footprint, yet still has a cable locking facility and also features an internal tamper switch.

Our World Bench 5 scores revealed sluggish performance from this PC, whose cornerstone is a 915G chipset-based motherboard and a Pentium 4 530 (3GHz) CPU, along with 512MB of DDR memory, an 80GB hard drive and integrated graphics. This configuration is plenty for everyday office tasks such as creating presentations, working on spreadsheets and using Internet services, but anything more than that, particularly tasks involving lots of graphics data, and the system will struggle.

The included Rescue and Recovery software can be used to create an "image" of the data on your hard drive, or onto CD using the installed DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive.

The versatile connectivity options include a full complement of legacy ports, plus a DVI port and USB 2.0 ports. For ease of use, it has two front-accessible USB 2.0 ports.

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