Lenovo's ThinkVantage Toolbox Safeguards ThinkPad and ThinkCentre PCs

The Lenovo ThinkVantage toolbox is based on the PC-Doctor diagnostics platform and contains a suite of processes aimed at monitoring and maintaining system health, security and productivity when run on ThinkPad and ThinkCentre desktop PCs. The actual application contains five tabs, two of which deal with the aforementioned health and security aspects and the other three provide diagnostics, support and information on related Lenovo software.

“Lenovo ThinkVantage Toolbox’s is like having an onboard PC technician,” Peter Schrady, vice president and general manager, Software, Peripherals and Enterprise Products, Lenovo, said. “It’s a powerful new toolset that will provide additional peace of mind for our customers – knowing that their PC is monitoring itself and ready to guide them through a problem, even before it occurs, getting them back to work with minimum disruption.”

The application will automatically notify users of any problems the system might have before any crashes, data losses or component failures have a chance to occur. The Toolbox itself will be able to run daily health scans and notify them if any component should be replaced. For instance, the application may determine that the battery has become weak or unable to remain charged as long as it should, automatically directing the end-user towards the suitable Lenovo web page where a replacement part may be ordered.

The Toolbox has five information tabs and each one displays information on specific aspects of the computer. The System Health tab monitors the status of key processes and system components, whereas the System Security tab oversees, obviously, the security features (antivirus, firewalls, etc.). Diagnosis capabilities are provided by the Diagnostics tab and, in addition, the Toolbox offers information on other Lenovo tools through the Ultimate Business Tool and the Lenovo Support tab.

Of course, end-users' systems will not be flooded with each and every Lenovo offer. The fully contextual support messaging capability will enable the Toolbox to only relay those messages that are relevant to the system (based on the diagnostics tests). The ThinkVantage achieves this also thanks to its integration of the recently released Intelligent Messaging Services (a contextual cloud-based architecture that ensures the user's privacy) from PC-Doctor.

“Our Intelligent Messaging Services (IMS) platform is a predictive, self-healing technology that can diagnose a problem or a performance issue before the user is even aware, and then help them take the appropriate corrective action,” Steve Petracca, chief executive officer, PC-Doctor, added. “IMS combined with Lenovo ThinkVantage Toolbox represents a major advancement in intelligent support services.”

The ThinkVantage Toolbox comes pre-installed on ThinkPad and ThinkCentre PCs running Windows 7, but also as a complimentary version that is available for download from the official website.