Lenovo ThinkPad W700 in der haus!

A Fedex truck pulled up this morning bearing the (almost) fully loaded ThinkPad W700 laptop promised to me by the fine folks at Lenovo. Quick Impressions * Huge. The unit hides a 17" 1920x1200 display, Wacom pad, the standard ThinkPad Touchpad/Nipple Mouse combo, thumbprint reader, built-in colorimeter, stereo speakers, stereo microphones, and webcam with space left over for whatever stickers you want to place there. * Plain Jane. Compared to offerings from HP and Toshiba, the Lenovo ThinkPad's Bauhaus matte black design is conservative in the extreme. * Fast. With an Extreme Core2 Duo processor, 4GB of RAM, Vista Ultimate x64, and two fast Hitachi drives in a RAID-0, the unit flies. How fast it flies is yet to be determined, but Vista rates the system at 5.6. * Battery Hog. Short of packing an onboard nuclear power supply, don't expect amazing battery life from this desktop replacement. Stay tuned, more reports to come as well as pictures.

Lenovo Unleashes Monster Notebook for Photographers

Delivers Industry’s First Built-in Digitizer and Color Calibrator Along with Ultimate Power, Multimedia and Display Technologies Lenovo today introduced a monster notebook aimed at photographers. This 17-inch beast includes an Intel Core2 Extreme processor, up to 8GB DDR3 RAM, a 400 nit WUXGA (1920x1200) monitor that displays 72% color gamut, has a built-in color calibrator by X-rite (embedded Huey Pro), Nvidia Quadro graphics (up to 1GB), RAID 0/1, Blu-Ray burner, and built-in Wacom tablet. A 7-in-1 card reader is included and you can add a CF card reader as well. The notebook supports 802.11 BANG, Bluetooth, ultra wideband, and will add Wi-Max support later this year. Pricing starts at $2,978 USD. With everything mentioned above, the price is over $5,000 USD. At first glance the W700 certainly contains all of the desired buzzwords: high res/high gamut monitor, color calibration, Wacom tablet, card readers, Quadro graphics, oodles of RAM, built-in RAID, Blu-ray burner, all of the 802.11's, WiMax, Ultra-wideband (does anyone use this yet?)... The list goes on and on. All this in an 8.3 pound package. Ouch. Be ready to hire an additional sherpa for lugging this baby. Still, photographers have been longing for a mobile workstation that meets their needs and this one appears to fit the bill. I am currently trying to get one in for review and I will let you know how usable this beast is. You can read the full press release here.