Lenovo Thinkpad W700 Review

Last year, Lenovo announced their new line of ThinkPad laptops – the W series. At the top of the dog pile is the ThinkPad W700 – a 17″ high gamut, high res, high power beast of a laptop. We were fortunate to get one in for long term review. This unit was so powerful and feature-rich that it took us by surprise.

Introduction

The Lenovo ThinkPad W Series is a class of notebooks so powerful that they are considered mobile workstations (hence the “W” moniker – aren’t marketing types clever?) and as such the design priorities for these desktop replacement systems are power, speed, large clear displays, speed and power. Battery life is, at best, abysmal. Were it not for the fact that to be considered a mobile device the unit needs to run unplugged, Lenovo engineers would be tempted to forgo batteries entirely from this model in order to save weight.

So what is the target market for this beast?

Professional photographers.

It is not unusual for high-end professional photographers to schlep a full Mac Pro or PC workstation-class system out into the field. So much so that a cottage industry has sprung up around building shipping cases for Mac Pro towers and Cinema Displays. I saw several examples of this at the PhotoPlus Expo in New York last October. Why commit this act of lunacy? For several reasons:

Many high-end cameras, mostly medium-format digital (MFD) and especially large-format scanning backs benefit greatly from operating tethered to a computer. The images that they produce are so large (currently up to 65 megapixels for MFD and several hundred megapixels for large-format scanning backs) that a computer is required to store and manipulate them. Recent advances in the capacity and speed of flash media have alleviated this requirement in MFD, but large-format scanning backs still have to be tethered.

In some cases, strict deadlines require that the photographer’s work be processed as quickly as possible in the field. While the photographer is shooting, a photo technician is busy processing the images as they come in. It can get that crazy.

In my case, I wanted to publish some articles in the field and process the images as quickly as possible. I used the W700 for processing my coverage of the PhotoPlus Expo last October and I was very pleased with the performance.

Lenovo engineers studied these requirements and came up with a laptop design that I dare say can be considered a portable digital darkroom.

Specifications

• Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Core Extreme Processor QX9300 (2.53GHz 1066MHz 12MBL2)
• Operating system: Genuine Windows Vista Ultimate 64
• Operating system language: Genuine Windows Vista Ultimate US English
• Display type: 17″ WUXGA 400NIT TFT
• System Graphics: NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700M 128-core CUDA parallel computing processor 1GB (dedicated)
• Total memory: 4 GB PC3-8500 DDR3 SDRAM 1067MHz SODIMM Memory (2 DIMM)
• Keyboard: Keyboard US English
• Pointing Device: Ultranav + Fingerprint Reader + Pantone Color Sensor + WACOM Digitizer
• Camera: 1.3 Megapixel Integrated Camera
• Storage subsystem: Internal RAID – Configured by Lenovo
• Configuration option: Primary SATA RAID 1 – (2 HDDs required)
• Primary Hard Drive: Dual 320GB, 5400rpm RAID Enabled Hard Disk Drives
• Optical device: DVD Recordable 8x Max Ultrabay Enhanced (Serial ATA)
• System expansion slots : Compact Flash + Express Card(34mm)
• Bluetooth: Integrated Bluetooth PAN
• Intel WiFi Link 5300 (AGN) with My WiFi Technology
• Battery: 9 cell Li-Ion Battery
• Power cord: Country Pack North America
• Language pack: Language Pack US English
• Dimensions: 16.1″ x 12.3″ x 1.5″
• Weight: 8 lb. 10 oz.

Features

As noted in the specs above, the W700 is quite a powerhouse. But the features that make this laptop ideal for the mobile photo studio are as follows:

• Fast processor with buckets of RAM
• Oodles of fast storage
• 64-bit OS to break the 3.5GB limit and allow you to bump up the RAM as far as you can afford
• A high-gamut, high resolution display with a 1GB discrete professional video card
• A built-in color calibrator
• A built-in Wacom digitizer tablet
• Integrated Compact Flash reader (finally!)
• 802.11 BANG support

Software

I added the following software to the system to complete the digital darkroom and adapt the system to my desktop workflow:

• Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.3
• Adobe Photoshop CS3
• Breeze Systems Downloader Pro

Performance

Benchmarking this beast would be a fairly pointless exercise as the majority of benchmarks are gaming oriented. However, my subjective impressions using the software set I installed have led me to the conclusion that this system has everything needed to meet the demands of a professional photographer. The Adobe products were very responsive and took advantage of the Wacom tablet (Lightroom’s new brush based tools were exceptionally useful here). RAW image processing was brisk and I was able to process and prepare hundreds if not thousands of photos with ease.

The 17-in display (1920×1200) was a joy to use compare to the paltry 1280×800 of my Alienware laptop. Lightroom had plenty of room to stretch allowing all sidebars, filmstrips and menus to be available at the same time. While Lightroom’s space saving tactic of allowing the sidebars and filmstrip to slide offscreen is often necessary on laptops, doing so annoys me because as I swing my mouse pointer around, I usually cause one of them to pop up. Bugs me no end. Such was not the case here.

Calibrating the monitor is very important to the workflow of a photographer. A properly calibrated monitor can save you hours of work color correcting your images. Usually this involves dangling a spectrophotometer in front of your display and allowing the software to take a series of measurements in order to profile your display. This profile can be affected by the ambient lighting of your work area, so many color calibrators take ambient light readings to account for environmental effects. A laptop, being a mobile device, has a problem with this as the lighting situation can vary every single time it is used. Lenovo engineers solved this little dilemma by incorporating the calibrator into the body of the unit (next to the fingerprint reader) and calibration is done with the lid closed, eliminating those pesky lighting changes from the equation. All you have to do is start the software, close the lid, wait till it beeps and voila! You have a calibrated monitor.

I have tried Wacom tablets in the past. While the current crop are technologically superior in every way to the ones I’ve used, there is a fundamental flaw in their design.

Me.

I have trouble not looking at what my hands are doing. I have used a computer for decades and have never mastered touch typing. I don’t have the gene for it. Same goes for the Wacom. I have to look at the pen when I am working with it. Can’t do it any other way. Guess that’s why Wacom invented Cintiq (for throwbacks such as myself). If this system could swing the display into a tablet layout (the swivel hinge would have to me made of adamantium) and allow me to use the pen directly on the image, they would have to pry this system from my cold, dead hands. Still, the onboard 3×5 tablet and pressure sensitive pen make a formidable combo if you can swing looking at the screen and moving your hand with a pen in it. Oddly, the same does not apply to a mouse – must use a different part of my brain.

Portability
At just a hair over 198 sq. inches, the top of this machine is a vast expanse of matte black. For a laptop, it’s not that portable. In fact, had Lenovo not come through in a pinch, I would not have been able to take it with me on an assignment. I couldn’t fit it into any of my laptop ready camera bags and I didn’t have a laptop bag big enough to hold it. But lets look at this from a professional photographer’s perspective. As I mentioned earlier, it is not unusual for a pro photographer to pack up his entire Mac Pro or PC Workstation (monitor and all) in a custom made suitcase and fly off to parts unknown. A Mac Pro weighs in at about 41 lbs. in an 8-core configuration and the monitor can add up to another 21 lbs. for the 24-in LED Cinema Display. PC weights are comparable. So that’s 62 lbs. in tower + monitor plus accessories and the weight of the cases themselves. Nine pounds doesn’t sound so bad now.
Pros and Cons

Conclusion

Despite its weight and high price, the Thinkpad delivers on its promise of being a portable digital darkroom. Any serious amateur or professional photographer would do well to add this unit to his/her arsenal. Granted, a new Macbook Pro weighs 2.3 lbs. less, but you only get half the CPU power, half the video memory, and no built-in Wacom tablet. The new W700d model adds a second pop-out display. This one’s a keeper. Wish I could have kept mine.

Tags: lenovo, review, thinkpad