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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/?
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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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...
... (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
Don't think of it in terms of 5 minutes of battery life, think 5 minutes of UPS backup. That's plenty of time to safely shut-down.
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
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."
The T43 is much flimsier than the T60 or T61. It cracks if you look at it funny.
No AC, IBM laptops were built by Lenovo for years (after they moved Laptop manufacturing from Greenock, UK) before they sold the home computing division.
Yes, They are blue. Blue is a well known colour, ideal for using in various ways in the physical world in which we live.
The Lenovo monster is just barely transporable, but so is a desktop.
It blows my mind how WHINEY techy people are today. Just barely transportable? what are you incredibly weak and cant carry that much weight?
Cripes I carry around over 45 pounds in my backpack daily. on my back on the bike, in my hand up the stairs. and this laptop would make no difference in my day. Take out all my test gear that makes up the most of my weight problems. Plus the Toughbook I carry weighs twice what this could soaking wet.
It's VERY transportable. If I can lift it and carry it without hurting my back or getting winded walking up 3 flights of stairs, it's incredibly transportable.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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.
You must have missed the part about the Bluetooth Buttplug.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
you must not be familiar with the Thinkpad line. They all look somewhat like that and have for a long time. Some people prefer that simple business only look. I personally try not to be concerned with outward appreance, even though Thinkpads do look dated.
In a world of acronyms, the words are the real victims.
The Man ain't trying to keep you down. It's nothing sinister.
Bullshit. I have a T43 and a relatively new T61... The T61 easily matches the T43 in terms of build quality, and both of them are rock solid compared to my wife's MacBook.
4.73 seconds, or thereabouts.
Be more sensitive! Keep in mind that for many on Slashdot the most excercise they ever get is tearing open bags of Doritos while clicking repetetively as they grind their WoW character.
I agree, it's not too heavy and some people like being able to take their work home without having to have 2 machines.
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.
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.
agreed - we moved to using T60 and T61's here - the quality is unmatched.
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
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"
Are you sure you aren't referring to Lenovo's non-Thinkpad lines (N series, etc)? Those are made of plastic and are not designed much like the Thinkpads at all. The Thinkpad series itself is still a very durable line...I'd put them at the top of the 'standard' laptop scale with regards to ruggedness, the best thing short of a Panasonic Toughbook.
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Troll much? The quality is same, before or after IBM. Lenovo was making those machines earlier, and they are making them now. How many Thinkpad do you own? I have two, and they are handsdown the best out there. In fact, after using T-60 for 3 years, I hate to touch even the shiniest Macbook out there, and let's not even talk about HP, Sony and Dell.
I'm glad I gave you opportunity to boast a bit. I believe I do more sport than you, with an average of 12.000 km/year on my bicycle, but I admit I would hate to carry 25Kg on my back to work and back - especially since it's a 2x15Km commute (on bicycle) and I walk 7 flights of stairs.
Conclusion: I must be weak and you are so strong, please do buy a 6 Kg laptop. Since you believe you won't notice it with 20 Kg on your back already. And by the way, I am sure those millions of people who got an ultraportable are just whiney, too. You outclass us all.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
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.
My T61 is great (15.4), though its a bit heavy.
That said, this new model must wiegh as much as a white dwarf star.
Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.
Artists who contract out their services. They will often work in-house, on their own equipment. Or if equipment is provided, they might want to use their own. It's a lot easier to bring in a notebook (albeit a heavy-ass one) than lugging a tower and screen around.
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.
He is already talking about pussies ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HMac users.
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.
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.
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.
To who modded me as troll: I forgot to disclose that I worked for Thinkpad tech support and, sadly, it's not "trolling", it's just "stating the truth". Lenovo engineered laptops are, from my point of view of ex-technician, less sturdy, even if I can't really speak of failure rates (as I suppose they were fudged to appease Evil corporate Overlords).
Bah. The only real system is the T-1000. It beat the crap out of the T-800.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Remember when ALL laptops pretty much STARTED at ~$3k?
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Probably to do with the fact that IBM sold their PC division to Lenovo. "Big Blue" is a nickname for IBM
In any event, IBM keyboards, typewriters, and some other manufactured devices, have played on the "Big Blue" concept, using the color for enter keys and carriage returns.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
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.
This thing weighs nearly a quarter of what you say you carry. Care to make that 45 pounds 55?
Most of the photographers who would want to carry a notebook around are also carrying quite a bit of camera gear. Of that gear, the notebook is the LEAST important, and the thing that can most easily take a few sacrifices to save some weight.
Yeah, but can you bulls-eye womp rats in your T61?
Hell is other people's code.
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.
I have a desktop PC I'd like to sell you.
It's transportable.
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.
The included tablet, on the other hand, is a nice idea: what else would you do with the hectare of "wrist rest" you get with a 17" screen? My only caveat, there, is that it appears to be on the WRONG SIDE. Silly right-handers. When will y'all learn? ;-)
Not everyone is Chuck Norris.
I think the blue enter keys are a tradition of IBM :( Much the same as the nipple controller in the middle of the keyboard.
I'm looking to buy a new laptop/desktop - my criteria are quad-core CPU or better, current generation graphics chip (Nvidia 9800 upwards) with as many stream processors as possible and as much texture memory as possible (512 MBytes+), a decent resolution screen (>1050 pixels vertically), dual hard disk drives, as many USB ports as possible (>3), and a good amount of system memory (2+ Gigabytes).
The components of this machine match my specification, the keypad and the Wacom to the right is an additional bonus, but the blue [Enter] keys and the 1" thick bezel just remind me of an 1970's IBM BYTE advert with a geek with thick square politburo glasses standing beside an IBM mainframe/line printer.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
I have a 17" monster and its great. I split my work time pretty evenly between the office, home and the road. At both the office and at home it docks with a 24" monitor and the 17" screen works well as a 1900x1200 second monitor. When on the road the screen is nice and big when at the hotel, and works well on the airplane.
but the blue [Enter] keys and the 1" thick bezel just remind me of an 1970's IBM BYTE advert with a geek with thick square politburo glasses standing beside an IBM mainframe/line printer.
Ah, but didja notice the IBM geek wore a white shirt and a tie? Ok, so it was usually a short-sleeved white shirt and tie, but still. I'll even go so far as to suggest he probably liked it!
Now before I ask you to get off my lawn, I'll direct your attention to the geek starring in the Verizon TV ads. It seems that politburo-style glasses are de rigeur for conveying a modern, stylish and professional image these days, particularly for those in the technical or literary fields. Surprised? I'll bet Elvis "I've been wearing them since the 70's" Costello is, too.
For the record, I prefer wearing a white shirt and tie to work, but I insist on removing the distracting red nipples from all my Thinkpads, right after I remove the Intel stickers, and tape over the IBM logo. I prefer to think of it as sortofkindof like owning a MacBook, but more corporate looking. Not having to add the requisite black turtlenecks to my wardrobe helps, too.
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.
I treat my R61 more more roughly than I've ever treated a laptop (maybe partly because it's thinner and lighter), and it just feels like the machine can take it. It feels solid. (Knock on wood--now it'll probably fall apart the next time I feel like carrying the opened laptop by the screen.)
A cat can't teach a dog to bark.
The only model that endures with me is the TnA
Development is programmable; Discovery is not programmable. (Fuller)
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.
Have a soy latte instead.
I've haven't seen anyone wearing glasses with frames this thick for around 60 years. On the other hand the modern smaller square framed glasses are quite popular.
To me, the LCD should fill the entire lid area minus a half inch frame. Anything else greater than that, and they should be using a larger LCD.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
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.