Back in August, I reviewed Lenovo’s IdeaCentre A720, an all-in-one touchscreen PC running Windows 7 bundled with several Lenovo applications focused on the touch interface. Since then, Microsoft has released Windows 8 and as promised, Lenovo now includes it as the default for the A720. The company kindly provided me a test machine for a second look.
Upon unboxing and setting up the system, I discover dead batteries in the wireless keyboard and mouse. I’m sure I have spare AAA batteries around the house someplace, but wait a minute! One of Window 8’s claims to fame is its touchscreen usability and this is after all, a touch screen computer. I elect to navigate the IdeaCentre by touch alone.
Initial boot time from the press of the power button to the Windows 8 home screen of colored tiles takes about 26 seconds, which is a notable improvement over the 45-second boot time under Windows 7.
Lenovo eliminates the IdeaTouch and Lenovo Vantage Tools applications found on the Windows 7 version of the system, as both would be redundant with the new user interface of Windows 8. McAfee anti-virus, however, ships as the default protection software. A group of application tiles under a Lenovo heading primarily contain a collection of games optimized for touchscreen usage. Most of these games were included previously (Air Hockey and Angry Birds, for example), but one especially colorful tile stands out for a new game called Fishing Joy. Unfortunately, I didn’t get much joy playing this one. Basically, players shoot bullets from a cannon at the bottom of the screen which burst into small fishing nets. The goal is simply to catch as many fish as possible. Gold coins rain down with each successful catch and are spent with each bullet fired. Larger size cannons are selectable too (necessary to catch some of the larger fish swimming about), but cost more to use. When you run out of coins, you have to wait for a timer to count down before the game gives you a few bonus coins to buy a couple more bullets to use, in an attempt to keep the game going. The tutorial screens and in-game dialog text are written in broken English, giving the game a shoddy feel.
Overall, I found Windows 8 relatively easy to navigate on the big 27-inch touchscreen. As expected, the Windows Charms panel is easy to call up with the swipe of a finger. Typing on the virtual keyboard, while somewhat tedious, is about as good an experience as one can get from the arrangement. The near constant flickering of the hard drive access light tells me the A720 struggles a bit to keep up with everything, but Windows 8 does a good job of maintaining a responsive feel anyway. (As I noted in my original review, this computer would surely be a better performer with a fast SSD instead of the slow 1 TB hard drive.)
So far, I’m not much of a fan of Windows 8, and I can’t say that the IdeaCentre has changed my opinion. Nonetheless, I think the A720 is better suited to it than Windows 7. Windows 8’s touch-centric design typically works best on tablets like Microsoft’s Surface, while desktop PC users have to make do with mouse navigation and keyboard shortcuts that sometimes feel like afterthoughts. With the IdeaCentre, Lenovo successfully marries the touch interface to a full-size desktop computer. This gives Windows 8 users the option of using the touchscreen where it’s optimal and the standard keyboard and mouse (or even voice recognition) everywhere else.
In closing, I give you a short YouTube video from professional musician Jordan Rudess ,where he demos a music synthesizer application called Morphwiz on an A720 running Windows 8. If nothing else, this illustrates a great niche market for a large touchscreen PC of this sort.
[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jrv46eJ5j24′]
I recently bought a Lenovo B540 all-in-one desktop Windows 8 PC. Compared to the A720, it has a smaller 23″ multi-touch screen, a more modest CPU, and the whole computer is built into the back of the monitor instead of a pedestal. My young kids are finding navigating Windows 8 by touch much more intuitive than Windows 7 with a mouse. I’m finding it tolerable, although I can’t see much advantage to Windows 8 if you don’t have a multi-touch monitor. To me, a 23″ screen feels really big. The 27″ screen on the A720 doesn’t seem to me like it ought to be much of an advantage considering they have the same 1080p resolution (1920 x 1080). Actually, my arms are getting tired just thinking about swiping around on a 27″ screen.