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Android

Lenovo To Offer Android PCs, Starting With an All-In-One That Can Pack a Core i9 (theregister.com) 25

Posted by BeauHD from the year-of-Linux-on-the-desktop dept.
Simon Sharwood writes via The Register: The Chinese manufacturer that took over IBM's PC business announced on Thursday that it's teamed with an outfit named Esper that specializes in custom cuts of Android, plus device management offerings. Android is most commonly used in handheld devices. Lenovo's taking it in an entirely different direction by making the ThinkCentre M70a: a desktop all-in-one.

The first fruit of the collaboration with Esper, the ThinkCentre M70a boasts a 21 -- inch touch screen and offers a choice of 12th-gen Intel core CPUs from the Core i3 to the almost workstation-grade Core i9, at prices from $889 to beyond $1250. What could you do with Android on a Corei9, plus the maximum 16GB DDR4 3200MHz and 512GB PCIe SSD Lenovo's machines allow? Almost anything -- but Lenovo thinks its Android effort will first be appreciated by customers in the retail, hospitality, and healthcare industries. Esper pitches its wares as ideal for point-of-sale systems, kiosks, and digital signage -- environments where users don't need to access diverse apps but do need a machine that reliably boots into custom environments.

Lenovo's not just doing desktop PCs. The number one PC maker by market share has promised it will also ship Esper's wares on the small form factor ThinkCentre M70q -- a machine designed to be bolted to the back of monitors. The ThinkEdge SE30 -- a ruggedized and fanless edge client -- will also have an Android option. So will the ThinkCentre M90n-1 IoT [PDF] -- another rugged client for edge applications.
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Lenovo To Offer Android PCs, Starting With an All-In-One That Can Pack a Core i9 More

Lenovo To Offer Android PCs, Starting With an All-In-One That Can Pack a Core i9

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  • it's happening (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    year of the linux desktop (technically)

  • Okay, how's that again? (Score:3)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Friday October 06, 2023 @09:38PM (#63907507)

    "Esper pitches its wares as ideal for point-of-sale systems, kiosks, and digital signage -- environments where users don't need to access diverse apps but do need a machine that reliably boots into custom environments."

    Why would any of those use cases need anything remotely like a Core i9 with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD?

    • Re:Okay, how's that again? (Score:5, Funny)

      by KiloByte ( 825081 ) on Saturday October 07, 2023 @12:34AM (#63907691)

      These specs are hardly adequate if that POS (piece-of-shit) system is written in Electron.

    • You wouldn't for point of sale, you probably wouldn't for a kiosk, but you might well for digital signage though ironically. Some digital signage is done with prerecorded video, and that's just streaming, you can do that with a dorito. But some of it is done with graphics generated on the endpoint, and if they're moving to more dynamic graphics with more effects then the cost of going from the high end i5 to a low end i9 is minimal compared to the overall cost of the system.

      Digital signage might also benefi

    • To account for another few years of bloat in the 10 giant frameworks used to produce a simple UI on some "modern" app?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

      Indeed, and why would you pair an i9 with a now outdated amount of memory and what is a rather small SSD - you can literally buy micro-SD cards that hold twice as much. I see a Crucial NVMe 1tb SSD for just GBP37 - USD45 now.

  • Anytime I see weird computer setups like this... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Lando242 ( 1322757 ) on Friday October 06, 2023 @10:48PM (#63907569)
    ...I just think of the headache it is going to cause me when some local manager picks up a half dozen of them and asks me to support them. Like that time I had to tell a manager that had just purchased a dozen Windows on Arm tablets without consulting us that they wouldn't run our anti-virus or remote assistance software and were therefor unsupportable. Or the time a manager bought a dozen laptops that ran Windows in S mode from the factory. They couldn't figure out how to turn it off, even after I talked them through it over the phone and sent them two different videos detailing it. They had to ship them to us for me to push that button, load our software on them, and then ship them back (we normally do it remotely). Or the time a manager purchased almost 40 'refurbished' PCs because they were only $450 each. What a steal, right?! They were all 8-11 years old. They did meet our system requirements. He had us on that. They all had Intel i5 CPUs, at least 8 GB of RAM (mismatched manufactures, sizes, and speeds), and SSDs (that had no branding on them at all and no SMART reporting, so our monitoring software kept generating weird tickets for them). Oh, expect that we explicitly forbid purchasing used equipment. Half of them had developed some kind of serious fault within 6 months. Yet, anytime something like this happens I look like the bad guy.
  • For a hell of a lot less money

  • custom cuts? (Score:3)

    by Vomitgod ( 6659552 ) on Saturday October 07, 2023 @02:17AM (#63907751)

    you mean - custom builds?

    • you mean - custom builds?

      Yep.

      Sounds as bizarre to these old ears as someone saying "dropped" when they mean "released". (I can assure you that I don't have the urge to buy or watch or even get near something when you say that it just got "dropped" ...)

  • What could you do with Android ...

    All the things you could do with Windows ME, although Android is probably closer to Windows XP in functionality, which was used for 32-bit embedded applications with GUI.

    ... don't need to access diverse apps ...

    MS Office look-alike SoftOffice, has a full-function productivity suite that requires a 14-inch screen: Easy for Windows, not so much for Android. Portability is restraining the Android OS at this stage. With Microsoft trying to monetize daily usage and user-profiling, there's less reason to pay the Microsoft toll.

    The one problem with

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Dadoo ( 899435 )

      Maybe this is a little off-topic, but since you mentioned it, where did you get the idea that Linux has a problem with backward compatibility? At work, they recently refused to allow me to install RHEL 9 on one of our servers, because the application we're using was compiled on RHEL 7. I didn't believe it would be a problem, so I found the oldest program I could - Unreal Gold, from the original CD. It worked fine. (They still didn't allow me to use RHEL 9.) I'm not sure what more you want.

      • Try installing the Loki-ported Linux games on a modern Linux system. I couldn't get them to work even with Loki_Compat on Debian 11, which is not exactly cutting edge.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Dadoo ( 899435 )

          I'm pretty sure Unreal is a Loki-ported game.That said, I vaguely remember having to use the installer to get the graphics working; I couldn't just copy my files over from another computer, like you can with the (command line) server. That's exactly the behavior I'd expect, given Linus' obsession with not changing user space.

          My kids would say, "sounds like a skill issue."

          • The classic Loki Linux games I've got specifically are UT3, Descent 3, Sim City 3000. Google "Loki_Compat" if you want to find out more about this in detail. I finally just relented and bought the Windows version again (I bought it boxed BITD) on GOG, and installed it in PlaysOnLinux. POL has an installer for the GOG version. Between POL and Proton-GE I am able to conveniently manage and run most games that are believed to run in Wine. But that's still easier than coming up with the right libraries to run a

    • The one problem with Android is the same as Linux: A lack of backward compatibility.

      It's an irritating problem but at least on Linux I can install a VM or container inside of my Linux install and run the old software in it. Can't do that on Android.

      The bigger problem is that most of the software you want to run hasn't been built for x86.

  • I know that in theory any tablet running Android or Chrome OS should also be able to run Linux, since, under the covers, they do in fact run Linux.

    Yet I've never seen ONE tablet in our price range (probably sub-$300) which could be rooted and could run Debian or anything similar without issues.

    Not even one.

    Proprietary drivers, undocumented hardware, network devices that go to sleep even when spammed with UDP broadcasts, and so on.

    I had to reluctantly recommend against going forward with Linux tablets for th

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