Lenovo’s latest cheap gaming PC sports a surprising legacy biz tech - from the 1980’s
A VGA port on a gaming desktop PC launched in 2023? No, you’re not hallucinating
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Lenovo’s latestLOQgaming PC, the Tower 17IRB8, features a port that was a favorite amongst businesses, the venerable VGA port. Yes, a gaming PC, launched in March 2023, has a connector that was released in 1987 when a resolution of 640 x 480 pixels was considered bleeding edge.
As a legacy port, Video Graphics Array is still popular with businesses and organizations of all sizes for a number of reasons, mostly to do with the adage,if it ain’t broke, don’t try to fix it. There’s no reliable data available but there are still thousands of working CRT or LCD monitors andbusiness projectorsthat have a VGA connector (and still a 4:3 aspect ratio), up to a resolution of 2048×1536 pixels.
That said, whether Lenovo is aiming for that particular audience remains to be seen. We don’t believe that is the case; it is likely that it’s just a matter of using what’s available, amotherboarddestined forbusiness PC, a belief further reinforced by the fact that the Tower 17IRB8 supportsWindows 11 Pro, can house two full sizehard disk drives(remember those), has four USB 2.0 ports (yet another technology from the last millennia) and what looks like standard audio capabilities (a single audio connector).
Lenovo also bundled two software applications prosumers and SMB will find helpful: Vantage and Smart Storage; the first one is adriver updatercombined with asystem utilitiesand a basicinternet security softwarewhile the second one is abackup softwarefor your smartphone or tablet, one that mimicscloud storagebut uses your PC to save data (you may perhaps use it forhosting a websitebut we haven’t tried that).
A boring workstation disguised as a gaming PC
Looking more closely at Lenovo’s portfolio, one can see that the Tower 17IRB8 is rather similar to theIntel-based SMB-friendly IdeaCentre 5i, albeit bigger and heavier; the IdeaCentre 5i is also known as the 14IRB8 - 14 standing for 14 liters. Both accept 13th generation Core i7processorsbut pair them with DDR4 memory (not DDR5), both use HDMI 1.4b (which only supports 4K at 30Hz) alongside VGA.
It absolutely makes sense for Lenovo to buy motherboards with as many features as possible and use them in as many models as possible. That’s what economies of scale is all about and further highlights the cold, harsh reality of a depressed global computing market. Business and consumer audiences are overlapping more than ever before: it’s only after sales support, the warranty and bundledoperating systemthat often separate the two.
Expect even more models to launch with that split personality syndrome.
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Désiré has been musing and writing about technology during a career spanning four decades. He dabbled inwebsite buildersandweb hostingwhen DHTML and frames were in vogue and started narrating about the impact of technology on society just before the start of the Y2K hysteria at the turn of the last millennium.
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