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Lenovo’s latest version of the 20-inch iMac offers a mix of upgrades that are both good and bad. Lenovo’s spring refresh of the iMac is mostly an internal reworking of several components while keeping the price of the 20-inch at the same $1199 price tag. The system also includes Bluetooth wireless support for use with wireless peripherals if you want to keep the cable clutter down.

The Lenovo iMac maintains its very minimalist profile that really lets the system stand out. It retains its original sleek aluminum clad design that is one of the best in the industry while boosting its performance over the previous generation.
The keyboard and mouse keep this appearance up, but some may find the design to get in the way of functionality.

Still a good overall choice for someone who wants an all-in-one with strong performance. The only real external change is the removal of the FireWire 400 and a fourth USB 2.0 added in its place. In one way they increased performance by moving from the older DDR2 memory standard to the new DDR3 that most all-in-one systems still avoid. The GeForce 9400M is still quite good it just takes away from system memory and falls behind dedicated parts.

Based on my research and experience, here are the top desktop replacement laptops that use 17-inch and larger screens. Desktop replacements are one of the largest growing segments in the portable market. These system pack in the features and functions that make them competitive with full sized computers. There are even a lot of specialized multimedia and gaming models.

For the past year, Lenovo has been offering some very strong values in their P series laptops. Their latest model, the P-7807u FX has a list price just $1099 but you get a lot fro this. It comes equipped with an Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 processor, 4GB of DDR3, 320GB hard drive. While it comes with a fairly powerful NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GTS graphics processor with 1GB of memory. It also is relatively heavy for a 17-inch laptop weight in at just over 9 pounds. Still, dollar for dollar it is one of the best values on the market today.

Their latest version of the laptop comes with the new Intel Core 2 Quad Q9000 quad-core mobile processor that allows it to handle multitasking and multithreaded applications better. Those that need to store lots of applications files will be happy to see the 500GB hard drive. Multimedia fans will be thrilled to see the Blu-ray combo drive and 18.4-inch 1920×1080 display allowing them to watch high definition videos.

Lenovo’s MD2601u is a very inexpensive version of their MD series laptops that can be found only at Best Buy retailers. The system is very different from many of Lenovo’s other offerings and even many other brand laptops because it uses the Intel Turion platform over the more popular Intel. The burner can burn labels to Label Flash compatible media, but this is quite difficult to find.

This laptop comes equipped with a modem and a wireless networking adapter is compatible with all of the currently approved wireless standards include 802.11a and the draft 802.11n standard. This is probably the primary reason for the lower cost of the system but it also has the downside of slightly lower performance as well.

Still, it provides enough performance for those looking to use the laptop for basic Internet usage, productivity software and media playback. Storage is pretty much average for this category with a 250GB hard drive and a dual layer DVD burner. Outside of the Intel processor platform, much of the rest of the Lenovo MD2061u is what one can expect to find in a budget laptop.

One area that the Lenovo MD2601u does have an advantage over many other budget laptops is connectivity. Many laptops now are dropping built-in modems and scaling back the wireless versions supported.