By : Cisco Cheng
Mention the word "supercomputer" and the first thing that comes to my mind is the big IBM machine that beat Garry Kasparov in chess. It's ironic that Lenovo, which acquired the IBM ThinkPad brand several years ago, has developed a workstation that isn't far off from the chess-playing Deep Blue, in the sense that it's far from elegant but has some very special capabilities. The ThinkPad W700 is monstrous, and its look may not strike a chord with fashion photographers, but some unheard-of built-in features will instantly make style moot. The Pantone color sensor, for instance, eliminates the need to carry a separate color calibration device; a Wacom digitizer that's traditionally part of the screen is cleverly positioned on the palm rest; and an option for a 10-inch secondary display that slides out from the back of the primary one is an industry first. These features, along with the built-in Intel quad-core technology, earn the W700 an Editors' Choice in the workstation category.
Although the W700's 9-pound footprint and its yawn-inducing black attire may not have the flashiness of a photographer's dream machine, there's a reason why this juggernaut lacks any style. It is a workstation intended for professional use. Its dimensions (12.2 by 16.1 by 1.5 inches), slightly larger than its peers, enable the W700 to house the big screen and all the cool technology built in. There are workstations that place more emphasis on style and are a shade lighter, like the 8.4-pound Sony VAIO VGN-AW190 and the 8.5-pound Dell Precision M6400 (stay tuned for our review), but their feature sets fall well short of the W700's.
Most professional photographers prefer big displays, and the W700's 17-inch widescreen is large enough to keep them from relying on an external monitor. It's not the new 18-inch (16:9 form factor) widescreens that have been popping up in systems like the Sony AW190 and the HP HDX18t. The W700 uses a traditional 16:10 format, which gives content creators room at the top and bottom of the screen but also creates the letterbox effect (black strips above and below) if you use it to view movies. Its 1,920-by-1,200 resolution is the highest that a 17-inch widescreen will go, and it's the one that professionals will want. (There's a 1,440-by-900 option, as well.)
Unlike with traditional laptop displays, the color fidelity and the contrast ratio are enhanced on this screen. Lenovo claims that the screen is capable of showing 72 percent of the Adobe RGB color gamut, whereas typical laptop displays show 45 percent. The AW190 makes no mention of a color-gamut percentage, and the Dell M6400 claims to show 100 percent of this gamut. The screen is devoid of any glare, a characteristic expected of all workstations. Its brightness levels, reported at 400 nits (cd/m2), are slightly lower than the 500-nit screen on the Sony AW190. Indeed, Sony's XBrite screen looks brighter and the colors more vivid. However, the screen differences between the W700 and the AW190 are slight, and either screen is an incredible asset to photographers.
Those familiar with the Pantone color calibrator remember the hassle of using this awkward peripheral as an external attachment. Lenovo did an ingenious thing by integrating its three sensors into the W700. Positioned on the palm rest, the sensors are barely noticeable, but the rewards of building them in are immeasurable. The aim of color calibration is to make sure that colors are accurately portrayed on the screen, so when they're printed out, for instance, there won't be any surprises. The included software that controls the calibrator is X-Rite's huey Pro. Once the software is initiated, a voice prompts you to close the lid, thus flushing out the light (so it's pitch black) for optimal results. With an external calibrator, flushing out lights in a room requires more effort than closing a lid on a laptop. The process takes about a minute, and the same voice will let you know when it's completed. The results show the pre-calibrated screen and the corrected version.
Right below the calibrator is another rare occurrence: A palm-rest Wacom digitizer. Traditionally, you'd find one on the screen itself, as with convertible tablets. But since the W700 doesn't have a rotating screen and the surface area below the keyboard is enormous, putting it on the palm rest made more sense. Writing, annotating, and drawing are similar to the way you'd do them in the Lenovo ThinkPad X200 Tablet. The writing area is substantially smaller (5 by 3.2 inches) but pleasant to work with, nonetheless. It's not touch-enabled, so you needn't worry about brushing your hand against it. The only way to use the digitizer is with the included digitizer pen that you can eject from the right-hand side.. In some ways, having the digitizer away from the screen is actually better, as it makes writing and drawing feel more natural. Our own Michael J. Miller did some hands-on testing himself, and it worked fine for him.
Although the secondary screen didn't come with my configuration, having one that slides out from the primary one (available in early 2009) is an amazing feat. This is basically a 10.2-inch widescreen that slides out into portrait mode and can be used to check e-mails, surf the Web, or multitask without interrupting the operations on the primary screen. Lenovo thought of everything in the feature set. A CompactFlash slot is available for D-SLR cameras that use the format, in addition to a separate SD slot on the bezel. There are three options for video-out, two of which are digital: a DisplayPort connection, which streams both video and audio, and a DVI-D port, which does video only. The Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (Dual Graphics) uses a similar DisplayPort technology, whereas the Sony AW190 integrates an HDMI-out port.
Other essential features include five USB ports, a FireWire port, a webcam, and a fingerprint reader. The fabulous keyboard and the dual pointing devices—a pointing stick and a touchpad—are exactly the same as those found on the Lenovo ThinkPad T400. Since it's a large system, the W700 is able to accommodate a numeric keypad as well. Although the dual-layer DVD burner sounds ordinary at this juncture, you can upgrade to a Blu-ray burner. The dual 160GB, 7,200-rpm (320GB total) hard drives not only spin fast but are arranged in RAID 0, which comes in handy for performance testing.
Anything less than a quad-core processor would be a disappointment on a machine this grand. The W700 runs a 2.53-GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9300 processor. Although the Sony AW190 and the ThinkPad T400 are amazing performers, they top out with dual-core processors. Add to the quad-core the 4GB of DDR3 memory and we have performance scores that are beyond anything I've seen on a laptop. The W700's SYSmark 2007 Overall score didn't paint an accurate picture, though, as it trailed the ThinkPad T400's by 3 percent. The W700's video-encoding and CineBench 10 scores, on the other hand, completely dominated the competition's. Its 44-second score on Windows Media Encoder 9 is 15 seconds less (roughly 35 percent faster) than the T400's. And its CineBench score was nearly double that of the competition.
The Nvidia Quadro FX 3700M is what the industry calls a workstation graphics card, meaning that its biggest selling point is ISV (Independent Software Vendor) certification. This assures customers that the programs a workstation has been certified for (such as the major CAD, DCC, and GIS applications) will run effectively on the W700. In addition to being so certified, the 3700M is also a powerful 3D graphics engine, so you can run hard-core 3D applications and games. Driven by the quad-core processor, its 3DMark 2006 scores at native and low resolutions in some cases doubled those of the MacBook Pro 15-inch (Dual Graphics) and the AW190. Even hard-core games like Crysis and World in Conflict favored the W700 at native resolutions. Battery life, however, is what you would expect from a 9-pound workstation: Its 2-hour, 31-minute score is not terrible, but nothing to write home about either.
Finally, a mobile workstation made for professional photographers! The Lenovo ThinkPad W700 is unlike any other workstation—or laptop, for that matter—breaking ground in areas that once seemed out of reach. It's the first and only laptop with an internal color calibrator. Placing a digitizer on the palm rest is also ingenious, and a secondary display is something that all laptops could use but only Lenovo has accomplished so far. Obviously, at this price, the W700 isn't for everyone. But if time is money in your field, the W700 will save you tons of it.
Source : www.pcmag.com
