A Fling with A 2015 Lenovo C20 All-In-One

Sometimes, when I go out to e-cycle items I end up coming back with something else. This was sometime time. I was out to dump a few laptops on behalf of students from the community centre where I work, when I saw a 2015 Lenovo C20 All-In-One. It had an undignified big ‘X’ scratched onto the screen, presumably to indicate that it no longer works. However, for most people ‘no longer working’ means that ‘it no longer runs a usable version of Microsoft Windows’, so I wondered if Linux could revive it.

Apple first came up with the All-In-One computer in 1984 with the original Macintosh, the CPU and the monitor were in the same unit, at a time when most consumer computers had these components separate. Fast forward to 2015, the C20 was Lenovo’s 2015 spin on the concept. The design had clear nods to Apple’s ground-breaking flat-screen iMacs of 2004. Having said that, it had an extra design feature: the kick stand doubled as a handle that enabled me to easily lift it out of the e-cycling dumpster where I found it (take that Apple, post 2000 iMacs were all difficult to move around, no such handle).

I couldn’t find a matching power supply in the dumpster, but was pleased to find that the power input was compatible with the Lenovo Thinkpad laptops, which I could cater to using my trusty Targus Universal Laptop Charger. Installing Linux was quite straightforward, I loaded it with Linux Mint 21.3. Upon checking the system specs, it disappointingly sported a Celeron (stay away from Celerons everyone), which immediately lowered my expectations. It was sluggish to be sure, but it sat on my desk for a few weeks as my daily driver running multiple browser tabs checking emails on Gmail, using Trello project management, managing eBay sales and Google Photos (which was the repository for my eBay item photos).

I loaded it with my 50GB Apple iTunes music collection, which it played without a problem using the stock Rhythmbox in Linux Mint. Another disappointment was however the audio, it was not as good as my older 2008 iMac. The audio on This C20 sounded small and tinny, something you would expect to come out of cheap laptop speakers. But I enjoyed having easy access to my music collection, and mostly played it through an external Bluetooth speaker. A software/OS problem with Rhythmbox was that it would stop playing when the screen went to sleep, something that perhaps hours of Linux research and tweaking could have fixed (I did not persevere because forums were discussing recompiling Rhythmbox from source to solve the problem, sorry, not at that level yet).

All in all, this All-In-One was surprisingly capable for a 10-year old computer pulled from a dumpster with a big ‘X’ scratched on the screen. There was however one dealbreaker: it did not have the original keyboard. I only had a generic keyboard, and this meant I could not control the screen brightness. This wasn’t a Linux Mint issue, I have installed LM on various Lenovo laptops, but because a laptop keyboard is of course compatible with itself by default, it responds to the screen brightness controls (usually Alt F5/F6). I tried a software solution using a screen brightness program, however this merely darkened the pixels, the screen was still on full blast. Because of this, using it at night was most uncomfortable. At night, excess blue light badly messes up your circadian rhythm, and for me it was to the point of slight nausea when using the Lenovo C20.

So, after several weeks of comfortably using it in the daytime but nights of slight nausea, I decided it was time for us to part. It was a good exercise and I learnt a lot, but ashes to ashes, dust to dust, back to the dumpster it went.

I reserve hope on one day finding a dumpster All-In-One together with its matching keyboard, because I certainly am a fan of the form factor, no messy cables, and (sometimes) decent speakers built-in for playing music. Until that day, it’s back to the small screen of a laptop for me.