Author: Adam Fowler

Lenovo Yoga Home 500

Posted on April 1, 2016September 12, 2021 by Adam Fowler

Lenovo has been on fire with their Yoga range in the last few months for home and business laptops (with my top picks being the Yoga 900 and the Thinkpad Yoga X1). Yoga being ‘on fire’ That makes me think of this:

Not to digress any further, the latest product I’ve been sent in the Yoga range (Thanks Lenovo!), is the Yoga Home 500.

When I first heard about it, all I knew was that it was an all-in-one PC. That didn’t sound too exciting – A screen and desktop box in a single unit, a form factor that had been around for many years, but I’d never actually had one to check out. What arrived was much more than what my expectations were.

Firstly yes, the Yoga Home 500 is an all-in-one PC. But it’s also a tablet. And a gaming box. And a family device hub for photos and videos.

I’ll start with the PC side of things. We have a 21.5″ screen, with a computer build into the chassis. Here’s the specs, I’ve underlined the ones I have in this model which seem to be the best possible :)

Lenovo Yoga Home 500Tech Specs

DESCRIPTION	LENOVO™ YOGA™ HOME 500
Processor	5^th Generation Intel^® Core™ i5-5200U Processor 5^th Generation Intel^® Core™ i3-5010U Processor 5^th Generation Intel^® Core™ i3-5005U Processor Intel^® Pentium^® Dual-Core Processor
Operating System	Windows 10 Home
Graphics	Intel^® Broadwell Integrated Graphics Up to NVIDIA^® GeForce^® 920A Discrete Graphics 1 GB DDR3-VRAM (gDDR3)
Memory	Up to 8 GB (4 GB / 8 GB) DDR3 – 1600 MHz
Webcam	1080p with Dual-array Microphone 1080p Light Sensor
Storage	Up to 500 GB / 1 TB HDD Up to 500 GB / 1 TB SSHD
Audio	Integrated 2 x 2.8 W Speakers
Battery	Up to 3 Hours with 4-cell 48 WHr Battery
Display	21.5″ FHD, 10-point Multitouch, LED Panel
Dimensions (W x D x H)	(mm) : 526.4 x 39.5 x 318.6 (inches) : 20.72″ x 1.55″ x 12.54″
Weight	Starting at 10.1 lbs (4.6 kg)
WLAN	WiFi 802.11 a/c or b/g/n, Bluetooth^® 4.0, Near Field Communication (NFC)
Ports	3 x USB 3.0 1 x Headphone / Microphone 1 x Power DC-in 1 x HDMI-in 6-in-1 Multi Card Reader

Some notes on the specs and hardware – There are two RAM slots, but with 8GB it was a single stick, meaning this can easily be upgraded to 16GB, assuming the RAM isn’t soldered in – I can’t find any videos or photos of the insides of this, and there’s no screws to be seen so most likely comes apart like an Apple iMac using a plunger.

The hard drive appears to be a hybrid with 8GB SSD cache, and close to 1TB for the rest. This gives a bit of a better performance than your standard platter HDD, but not as good as an SSD. I found it fairly snappy overall despite this.

The screen seems of high quality, touch response was great. The dedicated NVIDIA Geforce 920A graphics card is a nice touch too, especially for being able to at least game with lower settings.

Yoga Home 500 Front

So yes, it seems to function quite fine as an all-in-one PC, and does everything you’d expect from a Windows 10 box. On the right hand side of the chassis is the power and volume up/down buttons:

Right Hand Side

… and on the left hand side is a Multi-Card Reader, Audio 3.5mm Jack, Three USB 3.0 ports, a HDMI in (so you can just use this as a monitor) and power in, using the standard rectangle plug that most (but not all) Lenovo products have these days:

Left Hand Side

As you can see from those photos, there’s a cool kickstand that holds the monitor up. This is fully adjustable (as in, you can set it to any position in it’s range, rather than just having a few locked options) and goes all the way down to tablet mode:

Tablet mode – this is where things start to get interesting. It’s a giant tablet, that has a 3 hour battery. Lenovo provides software called Aura along with a bunch of apps and games, and an app store for free. From what I can tell, the idea of this is to have a device in the middle of the table that a family or group of friends can sit around and have fun with. 4 player touch games, along with using the paddles and joysticks that come free with the Yoga Home 500, or going through photos and videos is where this device shows it’s strengths. I can see this being really useful for coming back from a holiday and showing photos off, flicking through and telling a story about what happened.

I thought I’d do a quick video on this, where it shows objects in Aura can be flicked across the screen, and orientated whichever way you like:

The games that come with this are actually quite decent, rather than being crappy low end games. Here you can see an asteroid type game that can take up to 4 players, using touch, joysticks or even bring your own controllers:

The app store seems to have a variety of different games, and yes there’s Air Hockey!

Other items that come with the Yoga Home 500 are a keyboard and mouse (both paired already to the device, no little bluetooth dongle required):

Stylish mouse with touch sensitive scrollwheel

Thin keyboard

There’s also the paddles and joysticks for playing games:

Joystick has plunger, paddles have 4 touchpads

And of course, because you’ll be putting your grubby mitts all over this thing, there’s a screen cleaner:

Official Lenovo Screen Cleaner

All together this is a pretty cool piece of kit. The 3 hours battery life means you can take this wherever you like in the house and play on it, but you’ve also got a giant screen and a lot of power under the hood for a particularly large portable device.

The Lenovo Yoga Home 500 is an all-rounder device, but does all those things quite well, rather than falling into the trap of doing all things averagely. It’s easy to use, has a multitude of use cases and due to it’s small footprint, it isn’t hard to find it a home somewhere around the house.

Any comments or questions about this, please respond below!

Lenovo P50 RAM Install

Posted on March 30, 2016April 12, 2016 by Adam Fowler

After reviewing the Lenovo ThinkPad P50, I decided to double the RAM from 16GB to 32GB. You can buy it with more RAM, or install it aftermarket. The RAM that came with mine was Samsung brand, but I bought and added Kingston DDR4 RAM with no issue.

Depending on your RAM configuration, you may just need to add RAM to the bottom of the laptop – as mine already had the sticks under the keyboard.

Lenovo have some great guides on how to take the laptop apart, which I followed:

Step 1 – Remove Battery

Step 2 – Remove Bottom Cover

Step 3 – Take Keyboard Off

Here’s a video I created on opening up the laptop and adding the RAM based on this:

Any questions please ask below!

Update: As Eric Xu pointed out to me, there’s also the great Lenovo Service Training Guide you can check out too :)

Instagram to Twitter With Images

Posted on March 30, 2016 by Adam Fowler

Instagram to Twitter integration sucks.

If you post a picture to Instagram, and use the inbuilt Twitter option, your tweet will end up looking like this:

Laptop Keyboard https://t.co/3Osq5NPuid

— Adam Fowler (@AdamFowler_IT) March 29, 2016

A link to your Instagram photo rather than the photo itself. However, there are ways you can have your Instagram photo embedded in the tweet, along with a link back to the Instagram post if you like:

Laptop Keyboard 2 https://t.co/CyIh64yv9H pic.twitter.com/mOxFPcGAsp

— Adam Fowler (@AdamFowler_IT) March 29, 2016

A third party app is required to do this, but the good news is that it’s free, automated and runs in the cloud.

If This Then That (IFTTT) can do a bunch of cool automations, called ‘recipes’. It will read off hundreds of different platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The recipe I’m using is “Share your Instagram pics as native Twitter photos” which will monitor your Instagram posts, and automatically copy and tweet anything you do with the Instagram image embedded. You don’t need to use the Twitter option on Instagram itself, as Instagram isn’t doing the work here.

To set this up:
1. Sign up for IFTTT (free), either ignore or go through their introduction.

2. Go to the Recipe and ‘Connect’ to each channel for Instagram and Twitter

3. Click ‘Add’ on the Recipe window (this shows up once the channels

4. Go to ‘My Recipes’ in the top bar. You’ll see the recipe where you can turn it off, run now (not needed to do since it runs when a new image is posted on your Instagram only) and you can edit the recipe if you want it changed, such as using different text.

That’s it. Post a photo on Instagram and see what happens!

Intel NUC 6th Gen

Posted on March 23, 2016September 12, 2021 by Adam Fowler

Almost two years ago, I wrote about my Media Player Quest. The end result hardware wise was an Intel NUC, which has been dutifully serving me media content and left on 24/7 for over two years.

It’s time to upgrade that now, and check out Intel’s newer lineup of NUCs that have the 6th generation Intel CPU inside.

The unit I received was the NUC6I5SYK – there’s also the NUC6I3SYK which is identical apart from having an i3 CPU rather than the i5 I received (a big step up from the Celeron in my old unit!).

There’s a bunch of different NUCs both old and new, but in the latest batch there are 5 to choose from. The cheaper ‘Pentium’ powered NUC NUC5PGYH, the NUC6i3SYH and NUC6I5SYH which are i3 and i5 powered NUCs with 2.5″ drive support, and the two I mentioned above, which are identical but don’t have 2.5″ drive support. All other specs are the same.

At this point you may be wondering which is best or which one to choose. Luckily this is pretty clear cut – if you don’t need much grunt, go for the NUC5PGYH. This still takes a 2.5″ drive, so you may be able to find a cheap small SSD to use. Otherwise, i3 and i5 are both pretty good, you’ll only need an i5 if you want to use it like a proper PC and play games or edit photos and videos, or other CPU intensive tasks. Finally, the SSD – go 2.5″ if you already have one to save money, or don’t care about the extra height. The M.2 version is a lot sleeker, but there should only be a small difference in SSD performance, which you probably won’t notice based on the common use cases for a NUC. If you’re hiding it behind a monitor, it’ll be easier to fit the M.2 version next to a wall.

My unit isn’t as tall as the 2.5″ models, because instead it takes a M.2 SSD instead. They look similar to RAM, but have the slot on the short side, rather than on the long side (see below). Don’t get these confused with mSATA – M.2 is the next generation of those and they have different connections. There’s a lot more technical information about this, if you’re interested check this guide out.

It’s worth pointing out that an Intel NUC isn’t a fully working PC out of the box. You’ll need to provide your own RAM and drive (HDD/SSD), but they are incredibly easy to install. 4 screws need unscrewing to take the bottom plate off:

and you’ll need to add two types of components:

1 & 2 are DDR4 SODIMM RAM sticks. 2 x 2GB in this one but they’ll take a maximum of 2 x 16GB = 32GB – more than enough! 3 is the M.2 SSD, mine of which (as you can see from the label) has a capacity of 120GB. I’m not storing too much locally – apart from Windows 10 and a few software installs, the media I’ll be playing is streamed either from the internet (care of services like Netflix) or via local network (care of Kodi).

Once those are added (and they’re incredibly easy to obtain from any PC parts supplier) the NUC is ready to go – at least, ready to have your OS of choice installed on it.

Port wise, the Intel NUC has more than enough for it’s small 115mm x 111mm x 32mm size.

Front: USB 3.0, USB 3.0 + charging, Audio In/Out 3.5mm jack, Power light, Infrared sensor

Right: Kensington lock, SDXC Card Slot

Back: Power, Air vents, HDMI, 1000mbit NIC, 2x USB 3.0 , DisplayPort

Also on top is power and HDD/SDD light:

This new NUC is a lot short than my previous unit, so I thought I’d introduce them to each other before sending the old one away:

Once I had the new NUC up and running, I did notice a smoother experience. The old one wasn’t actually slow for general Windows 10 usage, but things felt snappier and more responsive with the much updated hardware.

Overall I can’t fault this unit. I loved the last one, and this just gives a refresh with newer hardware and more connection types. What isn’t there to like about this? VESA mounts are included too, which will turn a screen into an all in one PC with ease. Other Mini PCs exist, but Intel support their own hardware well and let you decide on your own RAM and storage requirements, rather than bundling the lot.

Intel know this makes a great Media Box and have created some Intel only apps, such as the “Intel® Remote Keyboard” which lets you use your phone as a keyboard and mouse which I’ll cover seperately soon.

Any questions about the NUCs? Comment below!

The Intel NUC covered in this post was provided by Intel Australia.

Lenovo ThinkPad P50 Review

Posted on March 11, 2016September 12, 2021 by Adam Fowler

“That’s not a laptop…. that’s a laptop.”

This is the phrase that sits in my head when I think about what the Lenovo ThinkPad P50 is. If the Yoga 900 is a Ferrari, then the P50 is a Monster Truck.

I’m getting ahead of myself here, so I’ll take a deep breath and start again.

Lenovo has released two high specc’d laptops – the ThinkPad P50 and ThinkPad P70. I was lucky enough to receive a P50 to review care of Lenovo, once I wiped the drool off my mouth.

“High specc’d” doesn’t do these laptops justice either. Although they come in a wide range of configurations, here’s what I have:

Intel Xeon E3-1505M v5 Processor (8MB Cache, up to 3.70GHz)
Windows 7 Professional 64 preinstalled through downgrade rights in Windows 10 Pro
15.6″ FHD (1920×1080), anti-glare, IPS
16GB DDR4-2133MHz ECC SODIMM (8GBx2)
NVIDIA Quadro M2000M 4GB
720p HD Camera with Microphone
Backlit Keyboard with Number Pad – English
3-button TrackPoint pointing device and 3-button multi-touch touchpad
Integrated Fingerprint Reader
Hardware dTPM Enabled
1TB 5400rpm HDD
256GB SSD OPAL2.0
170W AC Adapter – ANZ (3pin)
6 Cell Li-Polymer Battery, 90Wh
Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 8260, 2×2, Wi-Fi with Bluetooth 4.0

Let’s go over some of these settings.

CPU – An Intel Xeon, a server CPU in a laptop! Xeons are normally reserved for servers, but Intel has now released a line for mobile workstations. You can read Intel’s announcement here.

OS – This one came with Windows 7, but a Windows 10 Pro license. It’s now running Windows 10, but good for those who need or want to run the older but reliable Windows 7, fully supported.

Screen – 15.6″ is a decent size for a laptop. The bezel around it is reasonably thin, and the actual image quality I am impressed with. There are options for a touch screen, or a higher res 3840×2160 screen – but 1920 x 1080 has less issues at the moment, especially when remote desktopping to other servers that won’t like the super high res.

RAM – 16GB came with this, but I’ll be adding in another 16GB for a total of 32GB. The laptop can go all the way up to 64GB(!!) and has 4 RAM slots, so you can put in 4 sticks of 16GB. I’ll *only* have 4 sticks of 8GB – but this amount of RAM is great for someone looking to run a bunch of virtual machines off their PC, or do some very high end artist work (images/video/3D rendering etc).

Video Card – The Intel Xeon CPU has an onboard Intel® HD Graphics P530, but beyond that, there’s also a dedicated NVIDIA Quadro card, with 4GB of RAM attached. Not designed for gaming, but will still do a decent job of it. The Quadro card gives the laptop the ability to support “four independent displays; Max resolution: 3840×2160@60Hz (DisplayPort via Mini DisplayPort cable); 3840×2160@60Hz (Thunderbolt); 3840×2160@30Hz (HDMI)” which is a big WOW!. You will need a few different cables to make this happen, but 3 extra screens at such a high res, straight off this laptop is very impressive.

Fingerprint Reader – A simple addition, but works really well. Check out my video here.

Primary Disk – Yes that’s right, just the primary for starters since you can have up to three. I *only* have two but that’s ample for what I need. The primary disk, running the OS is a 256gb SSD. There is an even faster SSD option, the 512GB SSD running over PCIe. If you want to know what that is, put on your reading glasses and check this article out – there’s a lot to learn.

Secondary Disk – Spinning disks still have their place, and I have a 1TB HDD in this. Still fast enough for most things that don’t need the crazy SSD type speeds of reading and writing. Perfect for storing things like movies, television, and virtual machines!

Weight – As I have the bigger 6 cell battery, this weighs in at 2.67kg. It’s not designed to discreetly fit into a small bag, you can’t contain a beast like this that way!

Other things like wireless, bluetooth, backlit keyboard are all standard (although you may have noticed this is big enough to have a full keypad too!).

Let’s see some more pictures!

P50 170w battery pack above a normal 65w Lenovo adapter – this thing needs juice!

Top of the P50

Bottom of the P50 – dock connector visible

Keyboard, trackpad, fingerprint reader – all great!

Backlit keyboard glowing in the dark

Right Hand Side – 3.5mm Audio out, 2 x USB3, Mini DisplayPort

Left Hand Side – ExpressCard/34 slot (above), 4-in-1 reader (MMC, SD, SDHC, SDXC) (below), Smartcard reader

Back of laptop – USB 3 (always on), USB 3, Ethernet, USB Type-C/Thunderbolt, HDMI, Power

Thoughts – There’s a few similar laptops in this space, but not many. These are perfect for the heavy user, and personally as an IT Pro, I love it. It has enough grunt to run up a full test environment where I can muck around with different servers and software, but all be enclosed on a device that sits on my desk, and can be moved around with ease.

It seems to be very well built and incredibly responsive when mucking around on it. I forgot to mention the battery life – I’ve left it on my desk for days unplugged, and it still has over half its battery life. The claim is “6-cell Hybrid Graphics: up to 13.2 hours” which is really good!

These aren’t cheap, but you’re paying for the high end hardware. They’re very customisable on the web though, so you can pick and choose the bits you do and don’t want.

Got any questions for me about the P50? Feel free to ask below!

Update 24th May 2016

As requested in the comments, here’s the RAM latency from CPU-Z after mixing Lenovo and Kingston RAM

Lenovo Yoga Home 500Tech Specs

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