Lenovo reveals small but mighty desktop workstation

Lenovo has unveiled a small desktop workstation in a new physical format that's smaller than previous compact designs, but which it claims still has the type of performance professional users require. Available from the end of this month, the ThinkStation P360 Ultra comes in a chassis that is less than 4 liters in total volume …

[ShadowSystems]

Is it true that it uses proprietary bits?

ISTR from a different story about these little beasties that it used a proprietary thingamajig to connect something & the folks commenting were worried that the company would either fail to offer that connector in the future, no 3rd party vendors would offer the connector, or that replacement parts would be difficult/impossible to find. If that's true, I'd avoid this machine like the plague. I've been burned before by vendors using such bits & then turning around to no longer support their own damned product.

If it is NOT true & it's all COTS hardware, then I could envision getting one to yank the drive, replace it with a similar/larger capacity one, & installing a decent OS on it instead. (If it ever got screwed, I could put the untouched original back in place & get the company to fix it under warranty.)

A nice new shiny computer sounds great, but not if I have to take Win10/11 infesting it.

[Khaptain]

Re: Is it true that it uses proprietary bits?

I don't have this exact model but I know that mine defiantly has proprietary connecters between the PSU and the Motherboard..

When my PSU fried it suddenly became a whole lot of extra pain to find the "adapter" and then have to perform some electrical shenanigans to correctly set things up.. You have to use a paperclips between two pin in order to allow for a boot.. It's easy to do but it feels like you lose any advantages that Lenovo has to offer( if there ever were any)

[ShadowSystems]

Re: Is it true that it uses proprietary bits?

Thank you for that, it's exactly what I was afraid of. Please enjoy a pint in gratitude.

[Gavin Chester]

Re: Is it true that it uses proprietary bits?

To be fair my home Dell UltraSmall, and the HP UltraSmalls I worked on in my time all have smaller than usual connectors in places such as power & SATA to fit the reduced spaces, so it's not Lenovo. Typically they use "standard" but smaller connectors such as JST rather than the usual SATA, although that's getting better as M.2 drives are becoming common.

The ones I have worked on all have offboard PSU for space reasons, so its just a standard DC barrel connector for power, and HP used the same PSU's as the laptops of the same vintage..

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Is it true that it uses proprietary bits?

If trend continues, lenovo will solder your memory as well - no easy replacement or extending. Only that is enough to stop buying lenovo computers and switch to other companies.

[thejoelr]

Missing a market.

That nvidia card isn't that great. Intel seems unable to produce NUC extremes in any meaningful volume. If they let it use real GPUs they would sell a whole lot more of them. I think the segment of customers who need a GPU for work but only one this powerful is pretty small..

[oiseau]

Re: Missing a market.

That nvidia card isn't that great.

Great or not, I've already been shafted by Nvidia once.

So no Nvidia cards ever again for me.

Same thing happened to me with Matrox cards years ago.

I took the loss and learned the lesson.

Yes, I've been using Linux for years.

These days, Linux Devuan.

O.

[Ken G]

Review or press release?

I'm sure it's a perfectly functional desktop but what's special enough to pick it over a competitor or cause someone to upgrade from last year?

This reads like a Lenovo press release with no added value from the Vulture's expert.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Review or press release?

It's probably a press release. Same on Ars Technica (which just ran a similar article about this computer).

Somehow Lenovo manages to get distinctive coverage in the press for even the most mundane of systems, while similar systems from other (Western) vendors don't.

[Anonymous Coward]

Pricing is expected to start at $1,299 in the US

beelink. Started as a crappy ali-based brand, but like with all those crappy tools (huyndai, etc.) it has grown (enough) to at least appear decent in terms of specs, top of the range is around 900 usd. But then, if you get a corporate discount with lenovo, and have been buying lenovo for 10 year or longer, then, well...