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Lenovo Intros the Monstrous ThinkPad W700
Engadget recently got their hands on an early delivery of Lenovo's new powerhouse of a laptop, the W700. Aimed at graphic artists and photographers, this beast is designed to really pack a punch. No word on how much for the extra fusion generator to power it for longer than 20 minutes. "Containing enough computational artillery to level a small village, this for-creatives-only behemoth is designed for sheer pixel pushing ... and little else. The system packs in two features aimed at graphic artists and photographers which are fairly unique to a laptop: a built in Wacom digitizer just to the right of the trackpad, and an on-board color calibrator. But what's happening under the hood you ask? Well, for starters the 17-incher sports the first-ever Intel Quad Core Extreme CPU in a laptop (no word on speeds at this point) as well as the first showing of NVIDIA's Quadro FX 3700 graphics chipset (with a hefty 1GB of memory on-board). The workstation also serves up dual hard drive bays configurable as RAID 0 or 1 (SSD or traditional disk, naturally), up to 8GB of DDR3 RAM, and an optional Blu-ray burner. Of course, that's fully kitted out -- the W700 starts at $2,978 and moves skyward from there."
...can it run Vista/Linux/?
This looks like it could collapse under its own weight if you pull it up from a side. It's a real shame that since Lenovo took over the thnkipad build qulity went down so much. Sure, IBM machines aren't perfect, but since the T-43 they just got as flimsy and non-durable as the competitors.
Apple needs to step up and try to match this.
hot enough to fry your eggs for breakfast.
The Wacom tablet is on the right of the trackpad, a very inconvenient place for us left-handers. Just another example example of the man trying to keeps us down.
a built in Wacom digitizer just to the right of the trackpad
Ideal unless you're left handed and therefore cursed to spend all your time catching the trackpad while trying to write/draw anything.
I'm guessing not many people will want one of these on their lap without heat resistant underpants so are they bundling a few pairs of (Lenova branded) heat-resistant undies?
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
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Why aim laptops at gfx people without card readers. Worse yet, say 3-1 in reader and not specify which cards it reads (Always reads the useless and outdated ones)
I predict that by the end of this year Thinkpads will be twice as powerful, 10,000 times larger, and so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe will own them.
Dammit! They could've made the first and the only laptop with SLI video card.
Seriously, why not just attach a carrying handle to a desktop and strap LCD monitor on the side?
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Funniest part? It's creatives who use Macs, exclusively. Having worked for many media companies, they only consider Macs. This beast will maybe find some gamers who like it. The rest--nah...
can someone care to explain the coloring of the Enter keys? Or is it just aesthetics?
... (she's a graphic designer):
"Ooooooh!" (based on in-built Wacom thingie). - Interest level: High
Seconds later, "But it's not a Mac!" - Interest level: None
I believe the whole 5 minutes of battery life is pure pleasure.
I do not see the economics working to make this a long term product offering. The cost structure (high) and specialized nature of the device (size, features) make this a very limited vertical offering. Perhaps Lenovo can use it like a "flagship" product to show what else they can do, but I would be shocked if you could still get this a year or so from now brand new. Plus the fact that it runs Windows but is targeted at a predominately Mac user market place.
no comment
Who the heck would want this thing? If you need that kind of power you are much better off wit a desktop. The Lenovo monster is just barely transporable, but so is a desktop.
I am trying to imagine this smart-dressed designer sitting in a cafe in spring, and placing his/her 6 Kg powerguzzler machine on the fine cafe table in front - that image just doesn't work.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
In other news, TSA agents are salivating of anticipation.
Left-handed users everywhere are cheering the W700, with its digitizer thoughtfully placed on the right so they won't inadvertently jog it when using the trackpad. "It might make more sense to turn the entire area in front of the keyboard into a trackpad/digitizer with software control," said Sandy Sinister of the Southpaw Liberation Army, "but instead they struck a blow for the cause! We're buying ten for our new HQ at Undisclosed Location."
This is by far the ugliest laptop I have ever seen :) .... What were they thinking?!
Does it run OS X.
Anyone interested in a digitiser probably already has one, and a separate one is more flexible and probably better than a fixed one.
Analyzer schmanalyzer.
Take those out and you have an OK power laptop.
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
The Man ain't trying to keep you down. It's nothing sinister.
4.73 seconds, or thereabouts.
This is for openGL programmers like me, rite?! I have an excuse to 15000 kr on this right? I need something decent for that gcc compiler or god forbid visual studio, right?! PLEASE TELL ME I MUST HAVE THIS!!
My -1 Troll is actually a +1 funny. And my -1 flame is actually a +1 insightfull.
are the most narrow minded as well.
Being creative does not suddenly make you a saint.
Not sure what the Quad-core Extreme Edition is, maybe it's the latest and greatest, but the X3350 processor in my laptop is good enough for me. It only has 960GB of hard disk, which is a bit gutting, I was hoping for >1TB but they couldn't get the 500GB hard disks.
It might be an urban legend, but I thought lefties were disproportionally represented in the heavily artistic fields. If that is true, it indicates they should offer left handed models if they are targeting that market niche.
I deal with pictures occasionally in my job, and I've had to manually/ocularly calibrate my monitors more than once. Big pain, especially when you don't have adequate lighting in the room.
The automatic calibration video really struck me as innovative, though nowhere close to game-changing, at least for a portable monitor. However, I don't understand where the system gets color information from.
The laptop has a camera on top of the LCD, so if there were, say, a tiny mirror near the trackpad it could see the monitor when the lid's down; but I see no reflective surface in the keyboard area--how does it see the monitor ouput?
Anyone care to share their take (or knowledge) on this? Just curious...
High performance notebooks are going the way of the SUV - people are realizing being able to play Call of Duty 4 is largely useless when their laptop lasts an hour before dying. While there always will be people that "plug in", if you have the time to sit down and have a physical power socket nearby, a lot of the time you have the time to truck at the LEAST a monitor and a matx system there too (for only about twice the weight and half the price).
This is why the EEE and mininotebook segment is succeeding, just like hybrids are succeeding. There is a realization among consumers that in most situations a laptop's role is going to be efficient on-the-go browsing and light office work, which does not require a barely-shrunk desktop processor and a massive screen.
Factor in the fact that nobody's going to do serious modeling/CAD work on a laptop (the only real reason for a quad-core processor and a bloody Quadro), and this is quite the solution to a problem that doesn't exist. The addition of DDR3 RAM and RAID 0 almost makes it comical, like they're trying to throw every 'too much money/too little sense' hardware choice at the wall and see what sticks.
...what it looks like.
Seriously, though, this is a flop waiting to happen. It might have some application in the hard-core CAD world once you turn off the wacom pad, though.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Thank goodness they thought to include a calibrator. Perhaps it'll actually be a Windows machine you CAN use for graphics, by correcting that god-awful and far-too-dark Windows gamma! But let me get this straight. People moan about the price of Macs - but nobody's balking at the idea of spending 3 grand on one of these cheap-assed bits of kit? The only reason you'd want one is for the quad core. Consider this though - the MacBook Pro range is due for imminent updates and the rumours are that they're going to go quad core to reposition the machines where they're supposed to sit in the range, ie: above the iMac, but below the Mac Pro. We'll probably also see a price drop at the same time (there usually is), so my prediction is to expect to pay around this figure or less for a quad core Mac laptop soon.
I've been wanting one of the wacom enabled laptops for a while now, had my eye on a M400 but it was JUST out of my price range. This thing is WAY too much for my needs (mostly evening and weekend industrial design sketching) but I have friends that probably already have themselves one in the mail. You can't beat being able to draw directly on the screen with pressure sensative lineweight control, it'll change your life as an artist once you get used to it. Not to mention you should be able to do some intense 3D sculpting with this new one.
Now to hit eBay and see who's hocking their old ones...
"The irony when tending a flock of sheep is the dogs you put in place to protect them are genetically mutated wolves"
Well I was mildly intrigued about this when I read the headline and assumed they had integrated a WACOM screen into the display but that would have been just another tablet laptop with a CINTIQUE built in! Instead they give you the crappiest of WACOM tablets hammered into the right of the trackpad. I don't know anyone that uses a WACOM for anything professional that can stand anything less than the 6x8 size. Having thrown together a 12" WACOM display from an old 14x9 USB Tablet and a 12" HD LCD Display I can say that the closer the size and ratio is to what you're drawing the better it is. For a laptop screen the 6x8 is about a 2:1 for distance which makes drawing a circle only mildly a pain in the ass. On the 4x3" it's #&@!%# impossible thus drawing most organic shapes becomes a lesson in interpretive art.
Just because everybody else wants to commit suicide does not mean you too should do that.
Fucking sheeple.
(On the other hand, please go ahead. You deserve it after posting the stupidest post on this thread.)
How would this baby look when placed side-by-side with the delicious X300?
Quantum hacker.
The original Mac Portable had that, the keyboard could slide left and right a few inches, and in that space you could fit either a trackball or a numeric keypad.
Of course, dimensions were somewhat larger back then...
"Good news, everyone!"
They are disabling your latte due to a bug in Java. Ewwwww
It's called a USB cord, that connects your Wacom tablet so you can use it with your left hand, right hand, or your foot if you want to. Seriously, why the f*ck is there a Wacom next to the trackpad? Who needs that? It's too small for any serious work and it will just get in the way. The last thing I need is to accidentally leave the wacom enabled and push every button on the screen when I rest my wrist on it while typing.
why is the drawing tablet situated for right-handers?
most artists are left-handed. What a total fuckup.
They're using their grammar skills there.
computational artillery?
this for-creatives-only behemoth?
pixel pushing?
what's happening under the hood?
And how about those verbs and phrases:
sports, showing (as in debut), hefty, serves up, fully kitted out, moves skyward?
OMG! It sounds like the submitter is trying to hype the thing! The specifications alone should be sufficient to impress us, or there isn't a story here...
Add this to the long line of screwups from "We're from China, we don't have to care" Lenovo.
Well, with IPS (aka Flexview) gone from the R/T series, this isn't going to replace it. I'd rather rip out a T61p 14.1" board and place it where the T60p mainboard was.
Just take a 15" 4:3 T series, put IPS back on it, offer a few rebranded Wacom tablets and call it a day. Call it a T62p. Then recall all W700 units.
File this with the Reserve Edition as "mistakes given the green light".
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
"Containing enough computational artillery to level a small village"
then don't let the russians put their hands on it. poor georgia.
What ? Me, worry ?
So this is how a geek compensates for being small in the pants.
I kind of got the idea into my head that "Lenovo" sounds like a kind of shampoo, and now I can't get rid of it. Any suggestions?
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
Remember when ALL laptops pretty much STARTED at ~$3k?
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
If you had linked to the source, instead of a weak article, you would find all the words you need. 3.0GHz My fantasy machine costs a little more than $5,100 us.
What?
My first thought on seeing this was, "If they're going to incorporate a Wacom digitizer, why not incorporate it in the display, and make the whole thing a tablet?" But I was forgetting that the display is 17 inches, and a digitzer that size would add another K or two to the price.
Did you not see that Lenovo has made IBM Thinkpads for years? And no, being (pretending to be?) a level 1 tech support monkey for IBM doesn't make you any more of an official resource.
:P
Now, as far as 'valid real world' experience goes, I have quite a bit. I work with all brands of laptops on a daily basis. I replace internal and external parts, rework them etc... I've worked on scores and scores of Thinkpads, including many T4Xs and T6Xs. In my opinion, they are well-built compared to *any* other major notebook brand (HP, Dell, Acer, Tosbhia etc..) and just as well built as the T2Xs and T3Xs. I even used to own a T21 AND T30, both of which I put together using parts and reassembled/disassembled numerous times.
In short, when it comes to build quality, my opinion is better than yours.
Fact: Everything I say is fiction.
Actually, most, if not all, of the notebooks and PCs in the world are manufactured in China and other countries of the Pacific Rim. Lenovo, in particular, has been making the IBM Thinkpads for years. It is only recently that they are being sold under the Lenovo brand rather than IBM. Odds are that your Manhattan publishing house friends are using "off market Chinese crap" with an IBM, Apple, HP/Compaq or some other name brand label on it. Oh, yeah, those Macs your developer friends are using were manufactured in the Pacific Rim as well.
It's a very dark ride.
When, at a glance, you mistake "Wacom digitizer" for "Wurlitzer."
The land shall stone them with the bread of his son.
This shows 10 year old design thinking. The trackpad and drawing pad should be one and bigger. At least it will be on the next gen Mac, I think, plus additional capabilities than just a mouse/digi-pad. No left/right hand bias then. Much bigger multi-use area. IBM might as well look for another OEM for its Windows-free system initiative if this is the kind of design sense Lenovo is stuck in.
Except that when Thinkpads cost that much, they:
1) still had Flexview on them.
2) were built to a level of quality that made them actually worth $3000.
3) had features that were functional, and available to all
4) Drove the point home that "Cheapness is weakness".
5) They actually gave a damn about the US citizens.
(even my own pre-selloff T42p came close to that at $2800)
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Apparently you didn't get the memo about thin, 15"(4:3) machines that did 2-3 hours of battery life with FireGL/Quadro cards, and with quality never approached by Asus.
If you wanted thin *and* environmentalist friendly:
The X30/X40 series will outlast those knockoff brands- used, but higher quality for the same (or lower) price.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
That won't fix the problems related to the lack of Flexview (aka S-IPS).
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
When did I say anything about thinness or environmentalism? If someone does CAD, rendering, etc they will be at a workstation. If someone does digital art they have no use for a Quadro/FireGL and a quad-core processor, a Wacom with something that can run Photoshop is good enough. They will not tolerate hauling a laptop around and running out of batteries every two hours.
My automotive parallel was only to illustrate the fact that people are quickly coming to the realization that more efficient, lighter machines allow a user to do the most common use of a laptop (surfing the web, typing up things in Word) without mediocre power that falls short of usefulness for high-performance apps (gaming, rendering, encoding) yet carries severe performance and heat disadvantages.
Other machines may be out there, from Lenovo or whoever, embracing that attitude. I don't care, because that's completely irrelevant. They are looking for a market that doesn't exist in this one.
Have a soy latte instead.
blend? I bet the "exhaust" will allow you to keep your coffee warm!
Ah, designing it so that only a retarded and unimportant portion of the population can use it. That's a really good move. Good luck to them. ... this is an excellent example where if you can't make things ambidextrous, make them flexible. Or, in this case, use an external USB tablet and let the user decide how to arrange their desktop. ... I can almost envisage the commendation which the pixel-pushing over-worker will get when the design leaks. The commendation's name begins with "P-45".
More seriously, having acquired a fucked-up wrist over the last week because the retard who prepares our offshore kits took a sudden liking to "right-handed" mice
What - this is intended for the market of people who push pixels with their laptop propped on their lap on the subway home. Wow, that's a big market. I bet you wouldn't want to lose 1/3 of them. And all those super-secret designs being manipulated on the train
(for non-Brits - a "P-45" is the form you get sent to the tax office when your employment is ended. Translate to your local equivalent.)
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
The problem is when actual quality goes out the window when there are more than enough people willing to pay for it. See the departure of Flexview and the bastardization of the entire Thinkpad line. People went to IBM(and up until the cancellation of the Flexview T60p), Lenovo for quality found nowhere else. Asus can't match it, Dell still can't match it, HP can't match it (they come close, but with no Flexview equivalent), and the lone folks at Fujitsu who only seem to put IPS/AFFS displays on tablets. They may be ex-IBM engineers, but they sure want to drive it to 3rd world junk quality in a hurry.
My largest concern is that the US is forced into accepting cheaper hardware just by being a specialized case of a third world country. That being all in the name of globalization and environmentalism.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.