PC Powerhouse For Home Or Office

The IdeaCentre K210 Extreme Power desktop is one model in a line of new desktop offerings from Lenovo that falls under the IdeaCentre K series family. All models have, by default, Intel Corp. Pentium Dual Core or Core 2 quad processors, but for the lowest-end K210, buyers can opt for a Celeron processor.

The higher-end model, the K220 Advanced Graphics, can be maxed out with 4 GB of DDR 3 memory and a 1-TB HDD. The highest end available in the K Series is the K230 Maximized Productivity machine. The K230 can be outfitted with Intel's Core 2 Quad Q9400 processor (2.66GHz, 1GHz, 6 MB). Memory can be extended to 8 GB.

Lenovo sent reviewers the K210 Extreme Power for a hands-on look.

With a performance benchmark Geekbench score of 4,173, this desktop PC has got spunk. The K210 has Intel's Core 2 Quad CPU at 2.4GHz. This model is a step up from Lenovo's lower-end K210 Photo and Music model. The default 500-GB hard drive and 4-GB memory are more than enough to run Microsoft Corp. Vista Home Premium and scored a decent Windows Experience Index rating of 3.6 within the operating system.

Lenovo has taken some aspects of its ThinkStation business-class machines and applied them to this series of desktops, such as the "tool-less" design, which allows for tool-free access inside the machine and for easy hardware upgrades. The tool-less concept extends to removal of the optical drive and to adapter retention.

The interior chassis is roomy and components are easy to add and remove. We also liked the fact that once the cover was off, the chassis' edges were rounded and not finger-slicing sharp as in other desktop designs.

Inside architecture includes a 5.25-inch standard optical bay, a 5.25-inch open bay and three additional bays. There are two PCI Express slots. There also are two additional 32-bit PCI slots.

Ports are plentiful. The rear panel has four USB ports, PS/2 ports, DB-9 and parallel ports, as well as connections for DVI, S-video and VGA. The front panel has two additional USB ports as well as a 16-in-1 media card reader. The K210 supports high-definition audio.

The K210 has a sleek silver and black finish and is snazzier-looking than Lenovo's business-class PCs. Included is an antimicrobial keyboard, as well as an HD-DVD/Blu-ray burner. The graphics card is an Nvidia Corp. GeForce 9300 GE, a decent enough card that has some 3-D capabilities, but gamers may want to consider an upgrade to a higher-end graphics card.

This tower PC's dimensions are 7.1 x 17 x 15 inches, and it weighs in at 21.5 pounds.

Lenovo has thrown in some other goodies. The bundled software is light on bloat, but comes with some useful applications like Trend Micro Inc.'s PC-cillin. The Lenovo Vantage Technology Start Center features Healthcare Software, which assists an end user in configuring an ergonomically friendly environment using the included Lenovo Bright Eye Camera and a feature called Bright Vision. Bright Vision will help protect against eye strain, will alert a user if he or she has been close to the display for too long and can automatically adjust the display brightness to a comfortable level in relation to the ambient brightness. The Bright Eye Camera is only available on select K series models.

The Start Center also has several system-maintenance options that are "one touch." When the PC is restarted, users can perform a variety of maintenance tasks by clicking F2: run antivirus, restore the system partition to factory backup, back up data and load drivers. This is Lenovo's Rescue System, designed to provide one-key recovery and one-key antivirus without the need to boot into Windows.

There's a bundled application called VeriFace, which can use facial recognition to sign a user into the machine. Using a Logitech Webcam, the facial-recognition software worked really well. Registering a face for security enrollment took a scant few seconds, and the K210 was able to log into Vista using a scan of the registered face on the first try. This feature worked much better on the K210 than on a Lenovo IdeaPad laptop the Test Center reviewed last year.

Other applications installed are Lenovo's Media Studio, EarthLink, Windows Live Toolbar, a 60-day trial version of Microsoft Office 2007, Corel Corp. WinDVD and CyberLink Corp. Power2Go—a burning software for data, music, video and photos that will work on Blu-ray as well as CD and DVD.

This is a system that will serve as a powerful multimedia machine for the home, but also could suffice for general business applications. At a starting list price of $649 and backed by Lenovo's standard warranty and support, it's also a relatively affordable offering for its class from a company that keeps churning out winning PCs.