Testing Lenovo's ThinkPad W700ds Dual-Screen Notebook 197
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."
The screen is on the wrong side (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:The screen is on the wrong side (Score:1, Interesting)
Yeah I would tend to agree with you, but for some reason most graphic designers put the pallets to the right of the screen. Just habit I guess, but old habits are hard to break. I think they most likely looked and where people placed pallets and put the screen there.
Re:The screen is on the wrong side (Score:5, Interesting)
WTH (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:WTH (Score:3, Interesting)
But does it have an LPT port?
Re:Well (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:WTH (Score:3, Interesting)
And it still comes with a built-in dialup modem inside.
What. The. Hell.
Last summer we got together at my friend's summer house to celebrate the international worker's day [wikipedia.org] (and the resulting 4-day weekend) by spending some time away from the smog and eating large quantities of barbecued meat.
We even had some of our friends from Croatia come over. One of them is a photographer for a daily newspaper.
He had to juggle-up some free time since he was supposed to be "on the call" that day, but he managed to get a colleague to do that for those couple of days.
Still, as he is better with color correction - he had to bring his laptop just in case some photos had to be checked before being sent to print.
Naturally, there is no wireless, DSL, cable or any other kind of dedicated internet connection at the summer house.
There is a phone line though.
And you can bet your ass that there WAS an emergency, and that the integrated modem DID come in handy.