Lenovo ThinkCentre Edge 71

The Lenovo ThinkCentre Edge 71 ($508 direct) is a standard entry-level tower desktop PC for your business. It's not perfect by any means, but it shows that you don't have to settle for buying two-generation old components in a $500 desktop PC. It's powerful enough to run today's apps, as well as tomorrow's business apps. It may be "just enough" for the business workers in your small shop, as such, it's our new Editors' Choice for entry-level business desktop PCs.

Design and Features
The ThinkCentre Edge 71 is a reasonably attractive tower, due to styling cues like the carrying handle mounted on the top of the system above the optical drive. This handle can be used to quickly carry the system from a cart to the end user's desk. The Edge 71 has the usual tower proportions: it's a smidge wider than the optical drive's tray and is a lot taller than it is wide. The chassis is essentially matte black, with some red accents like on the system's handle. Inside the chassis, there's room for an additional hard drive, one more memory DIMM, a PCIe x16 graphics card and two PCIe x1 expansion cards. However, the system's relatively low-powered 180W power supply means that you won't be installing a high-end 200W graphics card anytime soon. For users that need that kind of power, look at a midrange or workstation-class system instead.

On the outside, there are six USB 2.0 ports, DVI, VGA, Ethernet, audio, serial, and parallel ports. Serial and parallel are there for really old peripherals, like dot matrix printers and bar code readers that a business might still need to support. It's notable that the system doesn't have any next generation ports like HDMI or DisplayPort for external monitors, nor eSATA or USB 3.0 ports for faster hard drivers. The system does support simultaneous multiple monitors with the included DVI and VGA ports, however.

The ThinkCentre Edge 71 comes with a few pre-loaded programs, most of which are useful. There are the usual ThinkVantage utilities, including rescue and recovery for getting your system back up and running, as well as programs that help keep your system's hardware and software drivers up to date. You'll also find a pre-installed copy of Google Chrome, a great browser that's an alternative to Internet Explorer. There's also the usual Office 2010 Starter, plus a business document template collection called Business in a Box. Skype and Norton Internet Security are marginally bloatware, particularly since Norton expires after 30 days of updates unless you pay for a full subscription. Not too bad for a business system, but I'd prefer if the copy of Norton was an installer instead of being pre-installed.

Performance
The ThinkCentre Edge 71 has an Intel Core i3-2120 dual-core processor with Intel integrated graphics. It's inherently faster than the Intel Core 2 Duo in the Editors' Choice HP Compaq 4000 Pro ($549 direct, 4.5 stars), and as such, the ThinkCentre Edge 71 is faster on the benchmark tests, including the Handbrake video encoder test and the Photoshop CS5 test. But the Acer Veriton L4610G-Ui5240W ($699 direct, 4 stars) trumps both with its Intel Core i5-2400S processor. Of course, at about $700 the Acer L4610G-Ui5240W is the high end of the entry-level business PC range. When we compare the ThinkCentre Edge 71 to systems with nettop-class processors like the HP 100B ($499.99, 4.0 stars) and Cybernet ZPC-D5 ($384 direct, 3 stars), you'll see the extra performance the Core i3 gives your users. Essentially, the performance in the ThinkCentre Edge 71 is "fast enough" for business use.

The ThinkCentre Edge 71 is faster than our current EC, the HP Compaq 4000 Pro, but that alone isn't enough to make the Lenovo the new top dog. The HP Compaq 4000 Pro is tool-less, while the Lenovo requires a screwdriver for component swaps. That said, the Lenovo has a newer processor and integrated graphics, so they're likely to stay relevant longer than the components in the 4000 Pro. The ThinkCentre also has more interior room for upgrades, so it can accommodate full-sized PCIe cards. Though the Cybernet ZPC-D5 is cheaper, the Lenovo gives you a lot more for the money. Prices on desktops are falling, especially at the entry level, so we're making the Lenovo ThinkCentre Edge 71 our latest Editors' Choice for entry-level business desktops.

BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS

COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the Lenovo ThinkCentre Edge 71 with several other desktops side by side.

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