Lenovo rolls quad-core and Atom-based IdeaCentres

Lenovo on Tuesday introduced three new desktops, including its first-ever nettop. At the high end, the IdeaCentre K220 and K230 are both upgrades to the older K210 and add options for faster Core 2 Quad chips as well more storage headroom (up to 1TB), Blu-ray and GeForce 9300M GE integrated video capable of full HD decoding. The PC builder makes each model a trade-off with the K220 having an optional webcam with face recognition but a maximum 4GB of memory; the K230 drops the webcam choice but handles up to 8GB of memory.

Stock models still begin at the rough performance levels of the K210. A K220 starts at $539 with the unusual configuration of a 2.4GHz Pentium dual-core, 2GB of memory, a 250GB hard drive and just Intel's basic GMA X3100 video but with a Blu-ray combo drive. Despite its higher maximum configuration, the K230 starts out at a lower $499 with a similar processor and graphics but with a DVD drive, a larger 500GB hard disk and 5GB of memory.

The IdeaCentre H200 is Lenovo's first Atom-based desktop and takes advantage of the very low-power CPU to render the system fanless and very quiet. It carries the specs of most typical high-end Atom systems with a 1.6GHz part, 1GB of memory and a 160GB hard drive but comes with a DVD reader to perform more conventional desktop chores.

The H200 ships first of the trio and is already available with prices starting at $299; a $339 version doubles the RAM to 2GB and disk space to 320GB, while a $399 version bundles a 19-inch display.

IdeaCentre K220 and K230