The W7xx series?

Got some questions of the intelligent thinkpaders......

why Lenovo stop making the w7xx series?

Will they make a comeback?

If you think they will make a comeback, what improvement you like too to see lenovo make with the W7xx series.

 

My guess is because 17" 16:10 1920x1200 displays went away, and that was half the point of getting the W7xx over the W5xx.

Also because the W720ds would have to go one of the following routes:
- Convince a manufacturer to continue producing the required 1920x1200 and 1280x??? displays
- Turn into a W820ds and offer 2560x1440 with a 1440x900 slide-out display (IMO the best option)
- Go with 1920x1080 and a 1024x600 slide-out display.

 

Sale volume was not enough to justify keeping it. Lenovo runs a lean model, anything dont earn the required ROI gets axed.

 

The reasons stated above, I don't believe Lenovo sold the W7xx series ever to justify continuing to pour money into R&D into such a small, ever so shrinking DTR mobile workstation market. It already faced stiff competition from the M6x00 and 87x0 series from Dell and HP. But W520 sales have been pretty good, huge owner's thread (I believe larger than T420/x220) and it is a good price point, very competitive against M4600/8560W.

 

But it is slightly weird that while the Thinkpad classic line is shrinking the Edge series are expanding exponentially.

 

In the end, Lenovo will keep on changing product to meet the bulk of its buyer's base. If that meant killing 4:3 because everyone else did, then Lenovo followed suit. Same with 16:10.

Does anyone have the numbers of the percentage of corporate/business customer of their total profit vs consumer end?

 

that sort of figure only Lenovo would know... but they make up more than 50% if my guess is correct. Also, Lenovo uses channel partner a lot to push out their products for sales to SME, and these channel partners leverage their contact and use their direct marketing model to push the product to the SME and end consumers. Online sales from Lenovo own eCommerce site would probably account for a small fraction of total number of machine sold (less than 10% if i am guessing correctly).

So those people whom buys thinkpad from Lenovo's own website are few and far between. Also, sometimes the channel partner offer deals that Lenovo won't replicate on their own website. For example they were offering T420 with Nvidia GPU, 3 years warranty, 8 gigs ram with i5-2520m cpu for only 699 AUD after cashback (that is even cheaper than the US price), and the same retail channel partner was pushing out T520 with i5-2410m cpu, 8 gigs of ram, intel gpu with 4 gigs of ram for 750 dollars after cashback, which i thought was already a killer deal for a thinkpad.

 

Can you give some examples of these 'channel partners' lead org?

This is really sad. I've always loved the double screen design and I was hoping to get a 17 inch desktop replacement thinkpad...

 

All of the above listed are reasons the W7xx 17" laptops are dead, defunct, extinct and ain't coming back.

ALSO...the original W700 was unleashed on the public in Aug 2008, literally ONE month before the financial collapse happened. Too late to change anything there. And, with leads times, the W701 was pushed into production, but never ended up getting the big push that the W700 did.

Combine that with more horsepower in the W520, cheaper external monitors, etc., and you have zero reason to keep a boat anchor like the W7xx laptop.

 

channel partner are basically value added resellers, i.e. brick-mortar store, or they could be resellers that only deal with small to medium businesses and act as a middleman between Lenovo and these organisations. In Australia companies like Centrecom, MLN are what you call channel partners, etc.

I tried to get a W700ds and it came with a faulty screen, so had to return it. They are such a brilliant machine, if Lenovo could use an IPS display they will be the ultimate machine, however the price for a fully specced one is also very steep.

 

There are some very nice full spec W700's on eBay for prices that keep going down. I bought my W700 from eBay as overstock, it had a full warranty and evidently it looked like the box had never even been opened, that was $1200 CAD in early 2010, i think they've gone down at least $200-300 for an entry level unit like mine, and the price drop seems to be even more for fully specced ones.

 

The number one reason: you can stack 2 17" Macbook Pros in the space of one W700ds, for the same price (new)

Seriously, dropping the W7's is so dumb though. In a couple more years, Lenovo will probably drop all their conventional laptops and leave just the Edge series as the only Thinkpads.

 

I would like for lenovo to bring back to W7xx back. make it a little slimier, cancel the dual screen, give a IPS screen and I can see it give the Precision m6600 a run for its money.