This review is part of a group test of Vista-ready desktop PCs.

Lenovo’s ThinkCentre A60 is a small form factor desktop designed for ease of maintenance. Unlike the other two systems we tested for this group review, Lenovo’s Vista-ready PC is based on an AMD processor and will be available with Vista from 30 January.

The ThinkCentre’s AMD Athlon 64 3500+ processor is clocked at 2.2GHz with 512MB memory and a 75GB hard drive, plus a DVD multiplayer drive.

Lenovo said that A60 models with Vista will have 1GB memory. The motherboard is based on an Nvidia chipset with integrated GeForce 6500 graphics functions.

This specification gives the ThinkCentre A60 an overall WEI of 2.0, not enough for Vista’s Aero graphics. Like the Acer, this was due to low memory, and having 1GB would fix this.

Lenovo’s PC was the only one not to need a driver update after Vista was installed. Both the HP and Acer systems required new graphics drivers to be manually applied.
While the ThinkCentre has almost the same footprint as HP’s PC, it is deeper than it is wide. We found this restricted the desk space available in front of the system for the keyboard. A catch on the top of the case allows the lid to slide back and be lifted off.

The chassis is spacious inside, with a removable metal tray holding the DVD drive and space for a floppy drive. The tray can be prised out once the front panel of the chassis has been unclipped, giving access to the four memory slots.

The ThinkCentre also has two PCI slots, one PCI Express x1 and one PCI Express x16 slot, all of which are free. Two USB ports are at the front of the case and four at the rear, alongside one parallel, one serial and two PS/2 ports.