Thinkpad W700: A Match For The Macbook Pro

Thinkpad W700: A Match For The Macbook Pro

Monday, October 13, 2008 - by Marco Chiappetta
Against the backdrop of rumors swirling around the net that Apple will announce a new Macbook Pro tomorrow, amongst a smattering of other notebooks, we have a thorough and detailed look at Lenovo’s counter-strike assault in the mobile workstation arena.

The Lenovo ThinkPad W700 is targeted as a graphics professional’s dream machine and even includes and integrated Wacom tablet and Digitizer pen. Powered with a Core 2 Duo T9600 processor (quad-core options available), up to 8GB of system memory, dual 160GB hard drives in RAID 0, a ThinkPad MaxBright 17” LCD screen and NVIDIA’s QuadroFX 3700M professional graphics under the hood, you know this machine means business.

If you think you need the upcoming Macbook Pro, you might want to look at what Lenovo is shipping today with the ThinkPad W700. Here at HotHardware, we were thoroughly impressed.

Lenovo Thinkpad W700 Mobile Workstation
Via: HotHardware | News Archive | Tags: ThinkPad, Macbook, W700, Mac, MacBook Pro, Book, Pad, ink, Pro, mat
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Comments

By mazuki on Oct 13, 2008

i think i want to cry....it's so beautiful

By Jimbo 2 on Oct 14, 2008

Most thorough review of the W700 I've seen to date.          
          
One question: If I buy the W700 with one hard drive and want to add a third-party second drive myself, how do I obtain the rubber/plastic bumpers Lenovo uses to physically secure the drive in the drive slot? Are they just sitting there waiting for me in the drive slot when I remove its cover? (I'm not interested in RAID.)          
          
I'm hoping that Lenovo doesn't force you to buy add-on internal hard drives directly from Lenovo.          
          
Thanks.

 

By epic on Oct 14, 2008

It's a Thinkpad so rest assured you'll be able to buy any adapters/sleds/sleeves needed from Lenovo if they are not supplied -- at a price of course. As a guide, the price for an Ultrabay SATA HDD adapter (to fit a 3rd harddisk in the ultrabay slot) is around $50. I'd hope the mounting kit for the primary and secondary bays would be cheaper though.

By Dave_HH on Oct 14, 2008

Thanks for the kind words, Jimbo and thanks for the detailed response, epic! Since we received the system with two drives in it, we're not sure how it would be shipped with an empty second bay. However, we would be surprised if the sled wasn't there since it's part of the configuration really.

We'll see if we can verify with our Lenovo contacts, regardless.

By epic on Oct 15, 2008

According to the Hardware Maintenance Manual for the W700 the hard disk bays uses the same rubber rails for mounting as on other current TPs namely FRU 41V9756 which are available for around $30.

You may also need a thin sled/caddy which fits on the hard drive and provides a handy tab for easy removal -- at least this is what you get in other Thinkpads.

By chrisconnolly on Oct 14, 2008

Hey Jimbo :

I'll more or less echo what Dave says on the matter. Lenovo shipped the system with two drives by default, so we're not positive on how they would ship if only one disk was ordered. I'm leaning towards that they would include the extra drive bay adapter by default, either pre-installed or in the box with accessories, but we're not 100% on the matter.

By shanewu on Oct 14, 2008

We're evaluating the W500 at my work, and it appears to be a decent machine as well. Not sure why, but Lenovo switched from NVIDIA in the T61p to ATI with the W500. And the W500's ATI card doesn't seem to be implemented very well (issues with custom settings in drivers to set up CATIA optimization).

What video card does the Macbook Pro have? It's not the $1000+ 3700M is it?

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