The Lenovo ThinkPad W700ds is a rather unique product, targeted squarely at mobile professionals who require the power, features, and performance of workstation-class machine on the go. We previously evaluated the standard ThinkPad W700 and praised the system for its performance and stand-out integrated features, like a Wacom Digitizer Tablet and X-Rite Color Calibrator. The ThinkPad W700ds takes all of the features offered by the W700 and ads a secondary, slide-out display, which increases monitor real-estate by 39%.
The machine we received for evaluation was outfitted with 4GB of RAM, a 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9300, an NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700M 1GB GPU, and dual Hitachi hard drives running in RAID 0 configuration. Its sale price? $6,209.00 as configured. ThinkPad W700ds pricing ranges from just over $4000 though, to approximately $8000 for a fully loaded configuration.
Lenovo ThinkPad W700ds Dual-Screen Mobile Workstation
Marco Chiappetta
Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com
