Lenovo: If a Computer Were a Hummer

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Consider it a heavy-duty portable workstation for the photographer, designer, video editor or architect who spends far too much time tweaking pictures. The Lenovo ThinkPad W701ds (the "ds" stands for dual-screen) features a 10.6-inch screen that slides out from under the wide 17-inch display, both LED backlit. There's an integrated Wacom digitizer tablet. An nVIDIA Quadro FX 3800M GPU compliments the 1.73GHz Intel Core i7-820QM processor. Weighing a hefty11.4 lb, the W701ds could be the Hummer of notebooks.

If the W701ds were a piano, it would be accompanied by its own piano tuner. In terms of displaying true, consistent colors, the W701ds and its single-screen sister, the W701, are self calibrating. Set the calibration program to run, close the cover so the screen faces the Wacom digitizer tablet, and the computer takes the guesswork out of what you'll be seeing.

There's a digitizer pen that pops out of the side of the computer, so you can use the 5- x 3-inch tablet with palm rest that occupies the space to the right of the touchpad and under the keyboard (left) for CAD/CAM design, sketching and selection. You can configure the digitizer to map to the entire screen or to a defined area. It's compatible with a variety of applications including Adobe Photoshop and Windows Paint.

The main 17-inch screen contains 1920 x 1200 pixels and a 16:10 aspect ratio. The secondary 10.6-inch screen in portrait orientation has a resolution of 768 x 1280 pixels. You can use the secondary display for anything, whether as a toolbox or a video window. A 2-Megapixel webcam is built in above the main screen along with an integrated digital microphone and a stereo speaker panel above the keyboard.


There's an abundance of connectivity. There are three USB 2.0 and one USB 3.0 ports. One can be used to charge a peripheral while the computer is in sleep mode. An eSATA connection is shared with a USB 2.0 port. There's a FireWire-400 (4-pin) connection. There's also an ExpressCard/34 Slot and a flash-media slot that can accommodate a CompactFlash, SD, MMC, SDHC, Memory Stick or Memory Stick PRO card. A Gigabit Ethernet (RJ-45) port runs up to 1000Mbps speed as well as an RJ-11 port with 56k dial-up modem. (Even power broadband users need a back-up plan.) There's 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. There's also an integrated fingerprint reader so the computer can verify who's trying to get in.

While there is an internal battery and a power brick the size of a book, Lenovo hasn't talked much about how many hours the computer will run off-grid. The assumption is that though you can move the computer to a work location, you'll probably be plugging it into a power strip. Still, Lenovo says you should be able to get up to two hours per charge from the computer's 9-cell lithium-ion battery.




The ThinkPads come with Windows 7 Professional (64-bit) and internal DVD burners. Two contain the dual screens, 1.73GHz Intel Core i7-820QM Quad-Core processors and nVIDIA Quadro FX 3800 GPUs with 1GB of graphics memory:

• One with a 500GB 7200rpm hard drive and 4GB of RAM and one with a 128GB SSD, 320GB 5400rpm hard drive, and 8GB of RAM;
• Two with single screens: one with a 1.6GHz Intel Core i7-720QM Quad-Core processor and another with a 1.7GHz Intel Core i&-820QM Quad-Core processor.