Thinkpad W701 and W701ds specs revealed!

If the primary concern is READING documents, a smart manufacturer could implement a orientation sensor system like the iPhone. Place the notebook on the cd-side (without anything connected to the other ports), and it flips to portrait mode for reading. Lay it flat, and it flips to landscape for editing. Oh yeah, they'd need some bezel-mounted navigation buttons for scrolling through the document.

 

Excellent idea! one thing we should compliment the software engineers about, in case it wasn't mentioned already, is anti-aliasing or font smoothing. This does help tremendously with legibility on resolution-challenged monitors!

As for the ThinkPad W700 series, one cannot help but notice that the bezel of the LCD is much taller that it needs for the 16:10 screen... Did they originally design it to receive a 4:3 format LCD, perhaps a 2048x1536 QXGA, like their old line of laptops? Maybe they couldn't find any LCD manufacturers to make them at a reasonable cost? I wouldn't be surprised this was the case...

As for flipping the monitor... Difficult to do with keyboard flat unless one uses a hinge system similar to what was used on the Dell 19 inch Dragon... I'm not sure that would be popular. So many people are already complaining about the 'excessive weight' of workstation class laptops... (I'm not, but I came from a profession where you'd carry at least 20 pounds of stuff on you all day long)

Finally - If you closely look at 17" WUXGA laptop screens (1920x1200), you will notice that they are quite legible. Of course everything windows related will appear small if you do not scale the DPIs up, but since LCD are inherently sharp, they are quite usable at that resolution. Heck if people actually find cell phone screens better with VGA resolution on a 2.8 inch diagonal, on a 17 inch diagonal the scale is up six times and even if the distance is increased by a factor of 1.5 (distance from eye to hand versus distance from eye to laptop screen), it still makes for a factor of 4, on the order of 2560*1920. It is quite feasible given the human eye resolution. The main factor to consider with high resolution legibility being, mainly contrast. But considering the eye candy is sacrosanct to modern OSes, no wonder everything is harder to read... There is simply to much visual junk to contend with... Put a Windows 3.1 and a Vista interface side by side (with font smoothing off) and tell me which one is easier on the eyes...

Well, got to go now, work to finish. But the resolution debate is not going to end anytime soon, I'm sure of that...

 

will this laptop ever get 5870s or other powerful cards ?
also wish it had usb 3.0

thxs

 

Can a gtx 480m be fitted in this laptop ? Toghether with a core i7 620m ?

 

No to both. The FX 3800M is plenty powerful and is the workstation variant of the GTX 285M. These machines aren't designed for consumers/gamers.

 

Why can't a gtx 480 be fitted inside ? Isn't the gtx 480 in the same slot format as the FX 3800M ?
Then how about an ati fire gl or something variant with dx 11?

I'm looking at this laptop for general use and for games, and i like it's keyboard, and it's specification, ports etc. The second monitor won't bother me either.
How many hdd slots does it have ? Is any of them 12.5mm large ?

The eurocom panther d900f with the 3 slots of ram can be equipped with 3x8gb dimm slots for a total of 24 gb ram. What if i were to fit the 8gb modules in the 4 ram slots, that would make for a total 32gb of ram, but isn't the chipset of the platform limited to 16gb ? Because i think this might be the case.

 

There are a lot more factors than just physical size (I'm not even sure Lenovo uses standard MXM) such as power, cooling, and BIOS support. Typically, the only GPU you will be able to install would be those workstation cards that already are options for the model, so if it isn't offered, you won't be able to take it from another system.

I know the W510, you can remove the ODD to fit a 12.7mm HDD in it but you'd have to look up the P/N for the ODD drive of the W701 to see if it's 12.7mm in height. There are no 8GB SO-DIMMs in the market currently nor being mass produced at the moment, so what you're saying isn't possible to even test on any system. But if you're just gaming and doing general tasks, you don't need more than 4GB and won't notice any benefit going above that amount.

 

I love the 1920x1200 resolution, and am sad that it seems to be going away. I abhor 16:9 aspect ratios, as it makes working on anything a major chore.

The FX2700M in mine plays just about anything I have put on here, but I rarely game much, and when I do, it is mostly Civilization IV.

There is one reason to get a laptop like this, and that is chewing through work and taking it with you. Programming, CAD, graphics (that is where the screen makes life worth living, calibrated and everything), DB work. It CAN play games, but that is not really the point of it. Get an ASUS for that.

 

If there are no 8 gb so dimms, how come eurocom can fit it's panther d900f with 24 gb ram with 3 slots only ?

 

They have a listing on ETA for July, but I have yet to see any news from the major memory manufacturers releasing 8GB SO-DIMM samples. Who knows, maybe they will release some in July, but I'd still take it with a grain of salt.

 

Actually, it will most likely fit. There's a quadro variant of 480M coming soon and is totally compatible with the current platforms with 3800M. But as Sgogeta mentioned, there are other important factors - BIOS support, stability and power related issues, etc.
So, I'd give Lenovo a few months before the Fermi card is fully supported.