Late last year I was contacted by some folks representing Lenovo with a request to review one of their products. I get requests like that quite often and until now I’ve rejected them all. But I made an exception this time because not only were they going to send one of their ThinkCentre all in one touch screen computers to me to use, they’re also going to send one to one of you to keep. Details will be coming soon about how you can win one.

I’ve put Lenovo’s official video overview of the ThinkCentre below. The overview includes many of the key tech specs.

The first thing I noticed about Lenovo ThinkCentre m90z when it arrived at my house ten days ago was “this thing is huge!” With a 23″ screen it’s bigger than all of the televisions I’ve owned except one. In fact, it’s so big it has been occupying the kitchen table in my house until we can figure out a better place for it. All of this screen real estate is great for my productivity. I’ve been using it for all of my blogging when I’ve been home. I can run Firefox windows and Chrome windows side-by-side on the screen. (If you’re wondering why I would do that it’s because I have two different Google accounts that I often use at the same time for blog-related tasks).

There’s more to the screen than it’s size. The sensitivity of the touch screen is excellent. In fact, one of our cats walked by it today while I was using Art Pad and his tail made a line on the Art Pad. I was using Art Pad because I’m a big fan of Dan Roam’s Back of the Napkin strategies for outlining and solving problems with simple sketches. I’ve always done that on paper because I can’t manipulate a mouse or track pad quickly enough to capture my sketched thoughts. Drawing on the screen with my finger or a soft plastic pointer allowed me to sketch just as quickly and coherently as I do with a pencil and paper. And by creating those sketches on my computer I can save them all there too.

Of course, I had to test out Google Earth on the Lenovo ThinkCentre m90z. It’s a blast zooming in and out and exploring with just a touch of the screen. You can see it in action in my video below.

There are some other edubloggers participating in the same Lenovo promotion and you might be interested in what they’re saying about the ThinkCentre m90z. Here’s what Miguel Guhlin is saying about it. Here’s a video post that Ben Rimes put together. Here’s what Kathy Schrock has written about it.

And just so the disclosures is abundantly clear, Lenovo gave me this computer and will be giving one to one of you too.