Lenovo Ships Sub-$400 Desktops

The company said it would ship the ThinkCentre E Series at an entry price of $379, and include crash and image recovery software with the systems.

"The small business market is growing really fast," said Dilip Bhatia, Lenovo's manager for worldwide desktops. "It's one of the biggest markets out there. We wanted to create a set of offerings that offer a differentiation in the marketplace."

The ThinkCentre E 50, in tower and small desktop form factors, are built with either Pentium 4 or Celeron processors and the Intel 915 GV chipset with GMA 900 graphics, and the SIS 661 FX Chipset.

The E Series will ship with Lenovo's Rescue and Recovery software preloaded, which assists in the recovery of a crashed PC. Among other things, the software permits the recovery of a system image in the event of a crash, Bhatia said.

Bhatia declined to comment on whether manufacturing efficiencies touted by Lenovo executives have enabled the company to begin shipping the low-priced desktops. However, those executives have promised that Lenovo would remain competitive with Dell, Round Rock, Texas, which has made low-pricing a hallmark of its most recent PC market share push.