PC Magazine April 11 2006 - The Home of the Barries

Lenovo ThinkVision L201p
The classic business-black
Lenovo ThinkVision L201p
monitor will blend into any
offi ce environment, particularly
those already equipped
with IBM/Lenovo systems.
But even die-hard IBM buyers
may want to think twice
before making the leap with
this monitor. Although it has
good image quality and wide
viewing angles, you can
fi nd better and lower-priced
alternatives.
The 20.1-inch, 1,600-by-
1,200 resolution LCD panel
is framed by an ultraslim
bezel that widens slightly at
the bottom. The monitor can
pivot up to 90 degrees clockwise,
tilt 30 degrees, swivel
90, and move as much as 4.3
inches vertically. The screen
doesn’t come with image-rotation
software, however, so
unless your graphics
card supports
rotation, you’ll
have to shell out
another $35 or so
to use the pivot
capability.
The L201p provides
digital and
analog inputs
and comes with
cables for both
connections, but
that’s the extent
of the connectivity
options—no USB
ports or multimedia video
inputs as seen on the HP
LP2065.
The L201p’s performance
on our DisplayMate tests was
better than average. Results
in analog and digital modes
were nearly identical, and
grayscale performance was
good across the board. But
FIRST LOOKS
Small Business: Displays
John Dickinson
Why I Hate Upgrades
Sometime this year Windows Vista, the next incarnation of Microsoft’s
operating system, will appear. And during roughly the same
period, Microsoft Offi ce 12 will show up. Should you upgrade?
Not if you can help it. Operating-system upgrades are particularly
diffi cult, because your machines aren’t equipped for them.
Your PCs were confi gured specifi cally for the version of Windows
they came with. Pushing a new, more demanding OS onto them
will almost certainly cause heartaches, because every PC in your
company is different. Despite your best efforts at standardization,
every employee has a slightly different software suite and
often different hardware as well. After an upgrade, some systems
will work and some won’t. Even when they do, you'll likely be left
with performance problems, because the upgraded machines
probably lack suffi cient processor power, memory, or disk capacity
to cope with the new operating system.
But believe it or not, applications upgrades can be even trickier,
because employees may not have the same
set of applications. Even if they do, they
often have different versions. So the effects
may be unpredictable. Here are just a few
examples of problems from my own experience
and from the experience of others.
• When PayCycle customers tried to upgrade
from Quicken 2004 to Quicken 2005,
THE LENOVO L201P is
outfi tted in classic black and is
business-ready, yet it is also a
bit pricey.
>MORE ON THE WEB
For reviews, tips, and advice,
all with a focus on small and
medium businesses, visit
www.smartcompany.com
we were disappointed
with the
way the panel displayed
small text;
fonts below 6.8
points were very
diffi cult to read.
Our DVD movie
and gaming tests
revealed that the
monitor had a moderate
tendency to
produce ghost trails
and artifacts (which
we expected, since
the panel has a 16-ms
pixel-response time).
The Lenovo Think-
Vision L201p is a very capable
20-inch LCD monitor. It performs
well but is priced significantly
higher than other
top performers.
Lenovo ThinkVision L201p
$799 direct. Lenovo Group Ltd.,
www.lenovo.com. lllmm
they could no longer download their payroll transactions because
Intuit abandoned the QFS fi le-transfer format.
• Quicken 2005 lost track of my own online payments, and Intuit
tech support could not fi gure out how to get it to remember
them. Their recommendation was to revert to Quicken 2004.
• Outlook 2003 disabled my Sony Clié's ability to communicate
with Outlook. It took a serious effort at reverse kludging (not the
same as reverse engineering) to fi x the problem.
• Symantec's Norton Antivirus 2005 disabled my Netgear
MP101 digital music player's ability to fi nd its disk database on my
server. It also blocked the ability of installation programs, such
as Hewlett-Packard's multifunction printer programs, to communicate
with the computers on a network. Finally, a senior tech at
Symantec advised me to disable the product's worm protection,
which he said is safe to do because the product's AutoProtect
feature provides more than adequate protection.
I could go on, but I'm sure you could
as well. If there is a bottom line here, it’s
that if your users don't absolutely need
to use the features in a new version of
a product, don't upgrade. And when it
comes to operating systems, if you feel
compelled to upgrade, bite the bullet and
buy new computers, too.
www.pcmag.com APRIL 11, 2006 PC MAGAZINE 61