What is the number one application being used in day-to-day tasks? Microsoft Word. That is true based on various statistics all over the world. That being the case, a high-end desktop is not really necessary if all you are going to do is type. If you want a computer that has all the bare essentials, the Lenovo H420 (7752-3FU) is perfect for you.

The H420 (7752-3FU) can be considered as a very standard tower computer. The design itself is very simple with a glossy black front and matte sides. The top of the front panel is reserved for the DVD multi-reader and burner. Just below that are the various media slots. These are used to connect your media cards, USB devices and audio jacks. The back also has the same components and various others which are not found on front. There are four additional USB 2.0 ports, an Ethernet port, VGA out and Ps/2 mouse and keyboard connections. Audio jacks are also present. The best feature of the back panel is the presence of an HDMI-out port. This means that the display can be sent to an HDTV for better viewing. HDMI is very essential in today’s society especially since people prefer the wider viewing angles of HDTVs.

It is also expected that since this is a bare-bones desktop, the internal parts would be limited. When you peek inside, you will notice that there are only two memory slots. Thankfully, these have been outfitted with two 3GB memory modules. Although it is upgradable to 8GB, that is pretty much the maximum which you can have. Likewise, it also has only 1 free bay as opposed to the two normally found on other desktops. The free bay is good for another hard drive while there is no free bay for an additional optical drive.

Adding components is also not a very good idea as the system only has a 280W power supply. Adding some devices via PCIe or SATA is fine but the power will be very limited. It might be a better idea to replace the power supply before adding more components. At any rate, the $480 price-tag will still give you a lot of savings.

The hard drive included in the system is a 1TB drive. It’s great that it is not loaded with bloatware and trial programs. The only thing worth complaining about is probably McAfee’s 60 day trial of their Internet Security program. Other than that, the rest of the system is fine. Nobody who pays $480 and is given a unit with 6GB of RAM and a dual-core processor has a right to complain.