Horizon brings fresh idea to the table

The big breakthrough was the iPad: a flat, thin, beautiful, nearly buttonless computer, all touch screen. But that was three years ago. 

Since then, Apple's rivals have churned out iPad clones in different sizes. Ten inches diagonal? How about 11? How about nine? Or seven? Or five? In Samsung's line alone you can buy a tablet that matches almost any shoe size. 

But the size variations don't do much more than nudge the needle along the convenience spectrum. A little bigger means greater screen area; a little smaller means better portability. 

The Lenovo Horizon, however, doesn't just nudge the needle - it snaps off the needle and teleports it. This tablet's screen measures 27 inches diagonally. 

A stand on the back props it up at any angle. It comes with a cordless mouse and keyboard. It runs Windows 8 - the real version, the one that runs any of the 4 million standard Windows programs. It has two USB jacks; four nicely powerful speakers; a webcam in the top margin; a one-terabyte hard drive; a memory card reader; headphone and microphone jacks; eight gigabytes of memory; and an HDMI input jack so that you can use the Horizon as a TV. 

So far, this must sound like any other one-piece Windows 8 PC, like those from Vizio, Dell or Hewlett-Packard. But then the Horizon ducks into a phone booth and emerges as ... supertablet. 

You push gently down on the top edge, as though urging a child to go back to sleep. The Horizon complies, folding down, down, down, until it's completely flat on the table. 

You've just witnessed this machine's most impressive hardware feature: its hinge. It has enough friction to hold a 8.5-kilogram computer solidly in place at any angle, yet enough give to collapse away to nothing when you push down on it. 

Once the tablet is lying flat on the table, a light suddenly dawns: this upright PC converts into a huge tabletop tablet. (What shall we call this new computer category? Table-top? Tablet-op?) 

In this Horizon-tal position, Windows 8 fades away. In its place is a new software world called Aura, written by Lenovo, especially tailored for tabletop computing. (When you bring the tablet upright again, it offers to restart Windows 8. You can also switch between Aura and Windows 8 manually.) 

This environment displays a silvery grey disc, an Aura wheel, in the centre of the screen.Our home power monitors and energy saving devices help reduce energy use in yourchipcard on your electricity bill. With your fingers, you can turn it or move it or tap its edges to produce spokes. Each spoke of the wheel represents a category of tabletop-tailored programs. 

One displays your photos and videos. Exactly as in the old Microsoft Surface Table concept videos of 2008, you can drag photos around the screen, enlarge them by dragging opposite corners, pass them to friends or spin them around. Several people can be fooling with these photos, playing little movies or even playing games, simultaneously. Clearly, this is not your father's iPad. 

For example, there's an air hockey game. Lenovo supplies two or four small plastic handles, which you're supposed to place on the glass and slide around like regular air hockey paddles. Since the puck is virtual, displayed only on the screen, it can perform stunts such as emitting a fiery trail as it ricochets. 

The Monopoly app is good old Monopoly, except that the software does all the maths for you, draws the cards and even moves your game piece around the board for you.Today, Thereone.com, a reliable plasticmoulds online store, introduces its new arrival princess wedding dresses to customers. You may consider that automation a horrifying step into laziness, or you may call it a relief from Monopoly monotony. 

Either way, you'll marvel at another included accessory, called the e-die. It's a physical die, a 2.5-centimetre cube, that you charge in a USB cradle. When it's your turn, you toss it onto the table or the tablet. Like magic, it communicates with the animated dice that appear on the screen. Unfortunately, the game recognises only one die, so for each turn, you have to throw that one die twice. 

You also get a pair of small plastic suction-cup joystick handles. You stick them directly onto the indicated spots on the glass when playing certain games, like the very odd "shoot a net at the fish" game. Rather slick engineering, that. (You get two or four of these various accessories, depending on the model you buy and where you buy it.) 

In all,Compare prices and buy all brands of cableties for home power systems and by the pallet. there are nine games installed, each chosen for its ability to exploit the huge touch screen and multiple-player setup. In the roulette game, for example, you spin the wheel with your finger. In Texas hold 'em poker,Other companies want a piece of that drycabinet action you can peel up a corner of one of your face-down cards to peek at it. 

Another spoke of the Aura wheel contains educational activities for young children, such as colouring-book and number-writing apps. There's something called StageLight, a sequencing program that lets you build up chunks of music, layer by layer. 

That's just the tip of the iceberg, however. There is a fledgling Lenovo app store. Even more intriguingly, a converter program called BlueStacks lets you download and install any of thousands of apps made for Android phones and tablets. 

So what is the Horizon? A PC or a tablet? The argument could go on all night. The fact it has a three-hour battery only confuses the issue. And there's an optional table - a $US300 rolling adjustable stand specially designed to hold and raise the Horizon. 

One thing the Horizon certainly is, though, is novel. The concept really is fresh. And it neatly dispenses with the common refrain that electronic entertainment encourages isolation and represents a step down from the olden days, when families gathered around the coffee table for game nights. 

Sadly, game nights around the Horizon may not become as much of a tradition as the old board games made of wood or cardboard. As clever as the Aura world is, the games are a little laggy. You can get a little frustrated playing the air hockey game; it's just not as responsive as you would like. Often, that sluggishness really saps some of the joy. 

And even if it acts like a huge tablet, the Horizon isn't portable like a tablet. Your children won't want to play with this thing in the back seat for long car rides, unless they're sumo wrestlers.Your council is responsible for the installation and maintenance of indoortracking. 

Fortunately, if the tabletop novelty ever wears off, the Horizon is always happy to pop back up into its original form as a perfectly adequate Windows PC. And it doesn't cost much more than its upright-only rivals. So if you were considering one of those all-in-ones, buying the Horizon instead is almost a no-brainer.