Lenovo to offer Android PCs, starting with an all-in-one that can pack a Core i9
- Reference: 1696565896
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/10/06/lenovo_esper_android_pcs/
- Source link:
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.
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The first fruit of the collaboration with Esper, the [2]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.
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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.
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As The Register 's long-running [6]BORK! BORK! BORK! column amply demonstrated, Windows PCs in public places tend to make Microsoft's failings your problem. Android hopefully offers a less Bork-prone alternative.
[7]Lenovo PC boss: 4 in 5 of our devices will be repairable by 2025
[8]Linux on the Arm-based Thinkpad X13S: It's getting there
[9]Misfiring Lenovo hires Ford director to help with revamp
[10]Lenovo's Yoga 9 is flexible at home, but stretches the friendship at work
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 [11]ThinkEdge SE30 – a ruggedized and fanless edge client – will also have an Android option.
So will the [12]ThinkCentre M90n-1 IoT [PDF] – another rugged client for edge applications.
"Dedicated devices are proliferating across several key industries," explained Lenovo director of global advanced solutions marketing and strategy Johanny Payero in a canned statement. That missive also refers to analyst research that found Android devices account for 41 per cent of enterprise fleets – well ahead of Windows's 26 percent share, the 24 percent of devices running Apple's iOS and the eight percent Linux presence. Lenovo therefore suggests its customers are happy to run Android, so won't object to the OS on PCs.
Speaking of PCs, demand for the devices [13]remains moderate . Maybe Lenovo hopes Android PCs will create a little extra interest – preferably not at the expense of its own Android tablets and Motorola handsets.
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Esper also advocates migrating existing x86 hardware to Android, to extend its life.
Due to Android's FOSS roots, that essentially means more Linux on the desktop – a trend Lenovo is now in a position to accelerate with its Android PCs. ®
Get our [15]Tech Resources
[1] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZR-axrsWhAocv@fWJFJmVAAAAAc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[2] https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/desktops/thinkcentre/m-series-aio/thinkcentre-m70a-gen-3-(21-inch-intel)/len102c0022?org
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZR-axrsWhAocv@fWJFJmVAAAAAc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZR-axrsWhAocv@fWJFJmVAAAAAc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZR-axrsWhAocv@fWJFJmVAAAAAc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.theregister.com/Tag/Bork/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/05/lenovo_pc_boss_4_in/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/08/linux_on_the_thinkpad_x13s/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/21/misfiring_lenovo_hires_ford_director/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/20/lenovo_yoga_9i_review/
[11] https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/desktops/thinkedge/thinkedge-se30/len102c0004?org
[12] https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkCentre/ThinkCentre_M90n_1_Nano_IoT/ThinkCentre_M90n_1_Nano_IoT_Spec.pdf
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/29/pc_bounceback_idc/
[14] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZR-axrsWhAocv@fWJFJmVAAAAAc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[15] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
"They" never had a clue.
Linux was never really suited for the desktop, mostly because it just doesn't run popular Windows software. This was always the case. People at home don't want to have to break out emulation tools and suffer incompatibilities just to open a Word doc. What killed it though is that people at home would associate "desktop" with "gaming machine", even back then (Warcraft, etc.). If you can't run games, is it still a home desktop?
The situation has evolved over the 25+ years I've been watching it. In that time, I've run Linux as my primary desktop for over a decade at a time at points. Even while managing Windows networks for a living. Of course it's viable. Always was. Just so long as you didn't expect to run the latest game or faddy videoconferencing program on it.
But the fact is that every market where there wasn't that expectation - of computer-doughnuts being able to do the most difficult of things to run the simplest of programs that really weren't suitable for the OS anyway - Linux walked in and owned the joint. Datacentre. Server. Embedded. Smartphone.
Now we're seeing Microsoft people MOVE AWAY from Microsoft-only things to the web... and Linux is creeping straight in to fill the gap. Schools are deploying millions of Chromebooks. Because if all you need is Chrome now to "run Office", then they're far cheaper, easier to manage and easier to lockdown (I know, I work in schools). Increasingly that "at home" laptop which granny just uses for browsing eBay for knitting patterns is becoming a Chromebook or even an Android tablet. Hell, I know of a school where they have ChromeOS Flex on the desktops and Chromebooks for the staff / kids. They don't need anything else any more. For work desktops, it's there and being used.
"They've" been saying the Linux desktop since the 90's because... I've been running a Linux desktop since the 90's just like them.
And now? Now I have a Steam Deck. Literally just Linux, running AAA Windows games on Steam on day of release at full whack, and sometimes better than Windows can run them natively. It's only possible because the emulation layers have improved enormously and standards like Vulkan have given a common base on which to implement things like DirectX -> Vulkan conversion layers. Valve invested HEAVILY in terms of time, money, people and effort to make that happen, along with the Proton people basically performing miracles (and, most importantly, they aren't done yet and still keep working on it).
Increasingly the x86-Windows-only thing is dying. Even Microsoft's own offerings are moving away from that. They want you to have Office on your iPad, so they can sell you Office. It took 30 years but common sense is starting to prevail again.
And now you can have a Linux desktop any time you like, for most people. A Linux *gaming* machine, okay you have to be careful but there are several viable options out there. But a desktop? For work and hobby and general use? Yeah, it's there. Use it.
I can plug my Samsung phone into any HDMI cable (or adaptor with HDMI), plug or connect in a mouse and keyboard (I have bluetooth models of both), and I basically get a "Chromebook" with all my Android apps to boot. Samsung DeX. I've used it to do all sorts of stuff. I literally have a Linux desktop in my phone. And - apart from gaming - I could do my job on that, and all my home browsing and other needs. And with the Steam Deck, gaming isn't an issue either. 1/3rd of my games are "officially" supported, including some new releases out of the box, and I can coax 80% of the rest into working with only minor tweaks.
Fact is that 95% of everything I do on my Windows laptop (bought for VR gaming), I could do on Linux already. Video editing I use Shotcut. Media I have Plex. Almost everything else is open-source or in the browser. It was only gaming that made me go Windows, and VR gaming at that (a particular weakness because even SteamVR struggles to match features on Linux and Windows, but it's fast catching up). If I was to leave that laptop only for Windows gaming, and had funds or felt the need for a different machine for daily life (I've left it on Windows 10, for example)... Linux would be my go-to.
And I can count the number of people I know with a full VR setup on my elbows. Me. That's it. Everyone else, if they have VR at all, has the ones where they have a tablet inside the headset (and that's almost universally running some kind of Linux).
Next time granny breaks her machine or only has an old clunker and wants to upgrade... stick ChromeOS Flex on it for her. It's free. She can do basically everything she needs on that, and it takes away so much legacy computing that it will make her life so much simpler. And that computer that was slowly falling over will have a new lease of life. If it doesn't work? So what. She had to buy a new machine anyway. But whenever I've done that for people, they find themselves using it for years more - whether alongside a new PC as a convenient Chromebook-like machine, or not even bothering to upgrade at all and just staying with it.
"They" were only ever wrong about public take-up. That's what we really mean. Are the public going to run a Linux desktop? And increasingly they are and don't even realise, while their satnav, mobile phone, and all the things that power their web-based services are Linux already anyway. They don't even know.
But you've been able to use (not just "run", but actually use) a Linux desktop for the best part of 2 decades, minimum. My university in 1997 had dual-boot Linux and NT desktops, and you could do everything you needed to in either. I was a maths student and I used Linux more than anyone else even back then.
I honestly judge IT guys who apply to work with me, or those I deal with professionally, who are still parroting things from the 90's that weren't even true back then, and they haven't bothered to update their information since. Telling me that you haven't even TRIED a Linux desktop in 20+ years of working in IT is like the other classic - implying that open-source software is somehow insecure because "everyone can hack it". Both those things show me a level of ignorance outside of everything MCSA that worries me about your ability to adapt and learn and understand other things.
Last guy I hired as an entirely untrained IT apprentice, I selected the young kid who'd run Linux at home and had a bunch of valid, up-to-date rationale for why he didn't like to use it as a desktop. He'd tried, learned, identified, and rationalised. We worked together through his whole career. He's an IT manager now, and puts all his peers to shame, not to mention MSPs and other outside entities who he has to deal with. And he has several Linux desktops.
Boot up ChromeOS Flex. Buy a Steam Deck. Or, better yet, just install Linux on your machine. It's literally part of Windows now, you don't have to risk your bootloader (those days are gone), run it in a VM. You can install an Ubuntu VM in about 4 clicks from modern Windows. Or, shock horror, wipe a machine and install Linux on it and try it.
You can tell me that it's "not for you" (I *HATE* MacOS, and I can't stand many of Linux desktop environments, and I would gladly surgically remove SystemD entirely), but I question anyone who says "you can't run Linux desktop" or similar nowadays. It means they haven't really tried it or think that everything non-Linux should work perfectly on it.
I've lately discovered FreeBSD and what a breath of fresh air, simplified with optimal consistent tools. I wish I'd discovered it long ago and now my days of speccing linux for servers is coming to an end.
linux over the years seems to have morphed into what it stood against. I find it and its culture getting very tiresome. Windows as a sever OS on its own really does seem a bit wrong. But in an Enterprise the admin and management is very developed.
On the desktop I use mulitple major OSes. Windows as the boot on one, linux as the boot os on another. Linux as a guest OS on the Windows. Mac OS on an M2 with linux and Windows ARM as guest OSes. They all have their place. None of them are rubbish on the desktop because they are, after all, just a host for applications and applications is where the productivity happens on desktops.
The big question is...
Will it be based on pristine AOSP, or the steaming Gargle-infected adware straight from the paddock?
Re: or the steaming Gargle-infected adware
Definitely the Gargle version.
If that is true then for most businesses this will be DOA.
The linked product page doesn't mention Android
The linked product page doesn't mention Android, at least as of now. Maybe it did before, or will in the future.
The link given to ThinkCentre M70a shows four models, but all of them come with Windows 11 Pro 64.
If they decide to sell an Android version, and it's cheaper, that's a good thing. Presumably it's still "a PC" and so you could run a Linux or BSD distribution of your choice - or bring your own Windows licence.
The best thing about MS and Apple
is that there is a consistent base for the desktop/phone.
The worst thing about Android is it's ability to have a myriad (manufacturer *and* telco crufted) different ways of doing something.
My Android Samsung has completely system different menus to my wifes Alcatel. Same (alleged) "version" of Android.
I am sick and tired of asking questions on how to do something and getting an answer that "works on mine".
Support?
My 2 year old phone isn't getting any more Android updates.
My 6 year old laptop is happily running Windows 11. My 'Grandfather's Axe' PC will continue forever.
I know there are similar long support for 'proper' Linux and Mac.
How long are these Android laptops going to be getting updates?
they have been saying the Linux desktop since the 90's. At that time it was still very geeky. Don't know how I don't use Linux much.