Slashdot Mirror
Testing Lenovo's ThinkPad W700ds Dual-Screen Notebook
MojoKid writes "Lenovo's ThinkPad W700 is a unique product, targeted squarely at mobile professionals who require the power, features, and performance of workstation-class product in a notebook. The machine has a few stand-out integrated features, like a Wacom Digitizer Tablet and X-Rite Color Calibrator. In addition, the ThinkPad W700ds version and adds a secondary, slide-out 10.6" WXGA+ display, which increases monitor real-estate by 39% spanning across its two panels. HotHardware's video demonstrates the machine's arsenal of toys for the graphics pro, in a somewhat portable desktop replacement notebook."
Ok, so your system is cheaper. But that's a *quad core* 2.53Ghz machine of the latest architecture. It's pretty damn fast. And the hard drives are 7,200 RPM and they're running on RAID 0, which is also very fast.
Plus it has a bunch of features yours is probably lacking:
- webcam
- fingerprint scanner
- Wacom tablet
- VGA/DualLink DVI/DisplayPort
- Display Calibrator
- FireWire
- Express/Smart Card expansion
- WiFi/Bluetooth
- Not to mention... fits in your backpack
All in all, that thing isn't too bad a price for a truly mobile workstation. But it has a pretty small target market.
Yo Dawg, we heard you like LCD screens, so we've put an LCD screen inside your LCD screen. So now you can look at things while you look at other things.
We also heard you like pointing devices, so this baby has three of them!, with two sets of buttons!
From the specs:
Operating System: Genuine Windows Vista Business 64
It's a good thing the put "Genuine" in there to clarify things. Otherwise people might assume IBM was shipping this $6,000 notebook with a pirated copy of Windows to keep the price down.
Better known as 318230.
Let's look again at those features.
- webcam -:$20.
- fingerprint scanner -: $35
- Wacom tablet -: $79
- VGA/DualLink DVI/DisplayPort -: Probably already in a $2K desktop.
- Display Calibrator -: Never seen this on desktop or Laptop before, don't know how well it works.
- FireWire -: Probably already in a $2K desktop.
- Express/Smart Card expansion -: 5 in 1 multicard reader. $15
- WiFi/Bluetooth -: USB Bluetooth and PCI WiFi -: $30 total
- Not to mention... fits in your backpack -: Back to the grand parent's point that "the extra cost really is just for mobility."
$2,179 is still a hell of a lot cheaper than $6,209.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Expandable+keyboard+puts+new+IBM+ThinkPad+in+a+class+of+its+own-a016694636
And this time it is no meme, but a real question. What good are slide-out screens and fancy fingerprint readers if they are based on such obscene hardware hacks that a normal operation system would be unable to use it all.
That is something reviews would actually be useful for.
The screen is on the wrong side. Because of the numeric keypad, the home position for typing is to the left side of the computer. This means that you are facing the left side of your screen while typing instead of facing the center of the screen. Putting the second screen on the right makes this even worse. You'll type while always looking slightly to the right. If the screen had been placed on the left side, at least a user could sit in front of the computer, type, and be facing the center of the two screens.
Cory Doctorow talking about cloud computing makes as much sense as George W Bush talking about electrical engineering.
Intel's new Core i7 920 can be overclocked to 3.2GHz with the stock cooler (and without voiding the warranty,) and go much higher on marginally more expensive coolers. 3.8GHz easily on a $40 heatsink and fan, 4.0 GHz if you opt for the extremely high end heatsinks, 4.2 GHz I've seen on water running stable. And on more exotic coolers, you can hit 4.5-5.0 GHz.
I imagine that is similar to his situation. The Core i7 costs $290 right now or so, and can easily beat the older Core 2 based $1550 processor you found in most benchmarks. Especially anything that hits the memory, as my i7 can hit 18GB/s (big B) to RAM. That's two and a half times what Intel's dual-QX9775 "Skulltrail" platform can do.
My entire machine cost lest than that QX9775, by the way.
- Not to mention... fits in your backpack
:-)
...which you have to carry in a wheelbarrow (*not supplied).
A one year discount pass to your local chiropractor.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Alright, now take it down to Starbucks to work on stuff while you have a coffee.
So much for boasting about '2 grand', huh? I agree with your point, but there are uses for expensive, portable computers, even uses that justify spending that kind of money.
So the engineers at Lenovo have pretty much crammed more "computer" into this laptop than any laptop has had crammed so far. Two screens, nearly full keyboard, two pointing devices, a digitizer tablet, along with a metric crapload of CPU, video, disk, memory, along with the usual gamut of notebook options. It'll set you back between 3000 and 8000 cool US dollars.
And it still comes with a built-in dialup modem inside.
What. The. Hell.
I can understand having RAID-0 on there from a performance standpoint, but it's downright STUPID on its own. For one, there's the obvious pitfalls of running the entire thing on such a setup (queue the old "the 0 stands for how many bytes you can recover if something goes wrong" joke). Secondly, if I'm going for pure performance, I'm NOT putting my OS and my scratch space on the same volume. If they want to be serious about this, they need to ditch the optical drive altogether and have room for another HDD for the OS and non-throwaway things. Granted, you should be making regular backups. But at least if one drive fails, the data is still a lot easier to get back than if it were thrown across two drives.
And yes, this is honest constructive criticism here. I'm a proud ThinkPad owner myself (T60 to be exact).
"So after all this, you make my case for me. To end this stalemate, you must die..."
Uh, boss. We accidentally put two screens on this laptop. What should we do?
Hm... Charge people twice the price and call it a feature!
Did Homer Simpson just join the Lenovo design team?
Cool! Not only do you have a model M but you also have a semiconductor fab plant!
We just bought two Quad core desktop machines with 8GB of Ram & 750 GB hard drives for $550 each. Granted, one is for database development, and the other is an emergency, emergency emergency database back up for our live site. (If the other 3 hosting providers would some how fail).
When I was more into the video production side of things, I lugged around a 17" powerbook. It was big, heavy, and inconvenient to use, especially on airplanes. That's why I moved to the 12.1 Powerbook that I am STILL using to type this.
If you are going to get a 17" to sit and park on a desk, or move from the home to the office, for that amount of money, you could get a pair of really, really good desktops and an external hard drive or use VNC.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Calling this thing dual screen is not too different to calling an old tv with an lcd display of the channel number dual screen. Okay that's a _slight_ exaggeration. Only slight. The second "screen" looks like it's not worth the trouble. Good for task lists and the like but not much else, yet oh so breakable. The headline had me envision something like a tablet pc with a second screen - instead I see something about the size of a size mirror on a combi van. More gimmick than useful. Farq off.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Perhaps if you had a portable computer, you'd get out of the house more and have more exposure to people who know how to spell words like "hand-built" and "terabyte", and who know that while using "CPU" to refer to an assembled computer could be synecdochic, the term "CPU unit" is redundant and proof positive that you're just a housebound failure. You're also drawing a false comparison between what is most likely a Pentium 4 class rig, incapable of exploiting the 4 gigs you're running in it, and more modern hardware. Your 2 grand rig probably could have been put together for half that. Ironically, most of us probably agree with your conclusion, that the W700ds carries a ridiculous premium, but I for one wouldn't want to be on your debate team.
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
The two screens, with the brightness set above seven, makes the laptop lighter.
It was on page three of the article.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
Not to mention that Lenevo (read = IBM) laptops are not 'just for mobility'. The built quality is just insane(ly good).
Laptop makers like Dell & co are building their portables with predictable failure in mind. That ofcourse means the cheapest of the cheapest parts that they can get their hands on and it must die in a certain amount of years, while Lenevo is know for building laptops that last and can resist impacts (like the harddisk that stops working when the laptop sensing it is falling).
So in other words you pay more money for a laptop that is built to last for as long as you'd wish. Lenevo is known for making Linux friendly computers, so you pay extra for the additional Linux testing. You also pay for the innovation that is really innovative (like the 'falling'-sensor so your FS doesn't get corrupted by a HD shock). The only thing that doesn't work yet is the fingerprint reader and the GPU switcher on Linux, but you can't blame Lenevo for that because there is simply no such functionality in Linux.
The GPU switcher is software that is being worked on in X.org (but development/planning has stalled) that switches between the onboard GPU and the ATI/nVidia GPU based on power management.
Here be signatures
Modems don't take up much space, nor cost much money. So unless you are dealing with a very small laptop (you aren't) or a cheap one (again not) why wouldn't you include a modem? The idea of laptops is to be able to take them on the go. Well guess what? Some places you go may not have high speed Internet. I know for the geek that has never left the city this might seem impossible but it happens. There are places where high speed just hasn't gotten to yet. However phone lines, well those are pretty wide spread. While it isn't impossible to find a location without a phone line, it is far more difficult than finding a place without high speed Internet.
Thus you include a modem, so that if it is needed, it's there. No reason not to when you've got the space and the $5 for the hardware isn't a major part of the price.
So while I wouldn't get a modem for a desktop, I'm glad my laptop has a modem, I've actually made use of it. My grandma finally did get high speed Internet because my uncle got tired of her not having it and set it all up, but until very recently she didn't. So when I went to visit her, it was dialup or no access.
It isn't as though the computer is just dialup. It also has a wired Ethernet connection, and WiFi. It just includes dialup as a fallback option.
Actually I've gotten the fingerprint reader to work on my T60 in Ubuntu, even from the command line. My guess is that it wouldn't be too terrible to get it working on this machine either...
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_enable_the_fingerprint_reader_with_ThinkFinger