ThinkPad W700ds: Workstation with Dual-Displays

Lenovo’s officially announcing the ThinkPad W700ds workstation today and I look forward to spending some time with one at CES this week. The ThinkPad W700ds has a primary 17-inch display and a 10.6-inch display that pops out to the right to provide extra work space for power users like engineers and video editors.

The W700ds is the first mobile workstation to feature dual displays. Using a secondary display can increase productivity and be a godsend for digital content creators as their notebook displays can get crowded with tool palettes and menus in applications like Adobe Photoshop and CAD.

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Rob Bushway from GottaBeMobile posted a quick demo of the W700ds and it looks pretty cool. The one downside he’s found so far is that when you extend the secondary display it cuts off any external displays.

I’ve been using the W700 on and off for the past couple of months and while it’s very powerful and has an excellent display, it’s big and bulky. The W700ds adds a few millimeters in thickness, which will make it even more unwieldy to transport. But the extra thickness and weight beats lugging around a secondary display, which can be a necessity for some professionals who need to work “on location.”

Here’s the full press release from Lenovo

Lenovo Lays Stake on Prime Screen Real-Estate with Industry’s First Dual Screen Mobile Workstation

ThinkPad W700ds mobile workstation brings ultimate intersection of innovation and performance

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NC January 5, 2009: Lenovo today is bringing users the highest levels of mobile workstation innovation and performance with the introduction of the ThinkPad W700ds mobile workstation. The ThinkPad W700ds gives users prime screen real-estate as the first mobile workstation in the industry with two screens. Lenovo combines a new balance of unique design with complex engineering and unparalleled performance to give users in the most demanding of fields such as digital content creation, oil and gas exploration, computer-aided design and photography, the ultimate mobile workstation.

The ThinkPad W700ds dual screen mobile workstation challenged our international development team to engineer a notebook to fit the way workstation users work – in the office and on the road,” said Mark Cohen, vice president, Notebook Business Unit, Lenovo. Bringing this level of innovation to the most extreme PC users required continually balancing size and functionality with keeping the PC cool and quiet. This mobile workstation is the result of where Lenovo innovation and performance intersect.”

The Power of Two

Because many workstation users typically work with two monitors, Lenovo designed the ThinkPad W700ds mobile workstation with two screens, accommodating their work habits while on-the-go and eliminating the compromise of having only one display when operating in a mobile environment. Research has shown that extra screen real-estate with multiple monitors helps maximize user productivity versus single display solutions.1 Measuring almost 40 percent of the 17-inch primary screen, the 10.6-inch second screen gives users extra screen real-estate measuring approximately the size of a Lenovo IdeaPad S10 netbook.

The second screen easily slides out from the PC cover behind the primary screen, and it can also be adjusted to fit a user’s viewing angle by up to 30 degrees, similarly to how a car’s rear view mirror tilts. This unique feature and test of engineering only adds a few millimeters in additional thickness to the mobile workstation over its predecessor, the ThinkPad W700 mobile workstation.

The second screen complements the primary optional 400-nit WUXGA display which provides up to twice the brightness of earlier ThinkPad mobile workstations. The primary screen’s 72 percent wide color gamut enables more than 50 percent greater color intensity for an uncompromised viewing experience.

Intersection of Innovation and Performance

With its second screen, the ThinkPad W700ds mobile workstation builds on the breakthrough capabilities offered in the ThinkPad W700 mobile workstation that included the industry’s first built-in digitizer and color calibrator for mobile workstations.

Ideal for digital content creators and users, the optional digitizer provides high resolution, pressure high resolution, pressure sensitive control of the primary screen, the primary and the secondary screen or a specific defined area of either screen. Select models also come with a color calibrator that quickly and automatically adjusts the screen’s color to give true-to-life images and rendering 2D and 3D images, which are important items for digital content creators.

Professional photographer, Phil Borges commented, The Lenovo ThinkPad W700 is the ultimate in portable workstations for photographers. The built in calibration and the ultra bright monitor make it possible for me to do work on the road that I would normally have to wait to do in the studio. The W700’s two built-in hard drives make backing up photos while I’m on the road or in the studio a snap. Normally the process takes me a couple of hours, but with the W700 backup time is cut in half. Now the new ThinkPad W700ds takes it one step further with a second screen, allowing me to move all my working palets to the second screen and giving me more real estate on the main screen for photo editing.”

The ThinkPad W700ds mobile workstation gives users the latest technologies that are essential for work in data and graphics-intensive fields such as computer-assisted design, computer-aided manufacturing and others. Top processing and graphics performance includes choices of Intel® mobile quad core and extreme processors with optional dual hard drives with RAID configurations and choices of NVIDIA® Quadro FX mobile graphics. The mobile workstation offers up to 8 GB of high speed DDR3 memory and choices of solid state drive storage and traditional hard disk drives for a maximum of 960 GB of possible total storage. The mobile workstation also carries certifications from more than 20 independent software applications.

The ThinkPad W700ds mobile workstation offers a rich, customizable multimedia experience with optional â„¢ DVD burner/player and high speed UDMA compact flash reader, support for Dual Link DVI, Display Port and VGA, a 7-in-1 multicard reader and five USB ports. In addition to WiFi, for connectivity beyond the office, select models support WiMAX. Security features include an optional fingerprint reader, a smartcard reader and hard drives with full-disk encryption.

The powerhouse mobile workstation also balances its functionality with staying cool and quiet. Lenovo engineered a dual thermal solution to keep the ThinkPad W700ds mobile workstation running as cool as ThinkPad notebooks and quieter than the ambient noise in a typical office.

Pricing and Availability2

The ThinkPad W700ds mobile workstation is available immediately through www.lenovo.com and business partners. Pricing for models starts at $3,663.

About Lenovo

Lenovo (HKSE: 992) (ADR: LNVGY) is dedicated to building exceptionally engineered personal computers. Lenovo’s business model is built on innovation, operational efficiency and customer satisfaction as well as a focus on investment in emerging markets. Formed by Lenovo Group’s acquisition of the former IBM Personal Computing Division, the company develops, manufactures and markets reliable, high-quality, secure and easy-to-use technology products and services worldwide. Lenovo has major research centers in Yamato, Japan; Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, China; and Raleigh, North Carolina. For more information see www.lenovo.com.

1Suzanne Ross: Microsoft Research News & Highlights Two Screens Are Better Than One”

2Prices do not include tax or shipping and are subject to change without notice and is tied to specific terms and conditions. Reseller prices may vary. Price does not include all advertised features. All offers subject to availability. Lenovo reserves the right to alter product offerings and specifications at any time without notice.

video from GottabeMobile, via jkontherun

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