Monday, December 22nd 2008
Lenovo Announces Dual-Screen Mobile Workstation - ThinkPad W700ds
Lenovo this weekend officially announced its ThinkPad W700ds (ds stands for dual-screen), a mobile workstation with two fully functional LCD displays. Inside and round the back of the main 17-inch display is housed a second one, 10.6-inch in diagonal that can also be tilted up to 30 degrees like a car's rearview mirror. The secondary WXGA display (768x1280), allows users to own a workstation notebook with dual-monitor support for the first time. Wes Williams, product marketing manager for ThinkPads, said: "People that use high-end computers, whether they are professional photographers or work in other fields, all use two displays at their desktops ... What we were trying to do in building a mobile workstation is give them the same experience. Not only do you need a great display, great graphics, great processor and RAID hard drive with a workstation, but it is hard going back to a single display mode." The Lenovo ThinkPad W700ds is said to make its first appearance at CES, starting January 5, 2008. Among the other cool features that will be integrated inside the W700ds are the latest Intel Core 2 Quad 45nm processors, NVIDIA Quadro mobile graphics, up to 8GB of DDR3 memory, and a pair of hard drive/solid-state drive bays for up to 960GB of storage. The W700ds' starting price is expected to be $3,600 upon availability.
Source:
Engadget
9 Comments on Lenovo Announces Dual-Screen Mobile Workstation - ThinkPad W700ds
I like what they are trying to do here. But, OMG, fugly.
If that second display were a touchscreen, you wouldn't need that tablet area, but it could prove to be useful.
Someone will still likely start saying "what's the point", and "get a desktop" blah blah blah, but I see this as rather useful. Forget having a desktop at all. This may not be extremely portable, but if it was meant to be, then they would have figured out a system using two 13" displays, and just gone for some ULV mobile processors, and some less powerful graphics circuitry inside.
I see this as possibly being the start of something. Laptops are slowly taking over, and now they have something that fits in nearly any category.
Next, a triple-monitor laptop :D
Not to mention, I'd never buy a Lenovo because of their shitty OS reinstall routines.
The second window is for:
1./ email, or
2./ messenging, or
3./ graphics program toolbars
Makes a lot of sense. Most "second" screens are "underutilised", so for someone needed something to keep their main desktop clear, this is perfect.
For gamers
4./ Ventrillo/teamspeak