Lenovo on Tuesday added some power to its venerable ThinkPad line, launching a laptop with a quad-core processor that could be its highest-performing notebook to date.

The ThinkPad W700, designed as a workstation alternative, also offers close to 1TB of storage and packs multimedia features to complement the speedy processor.

Targeted at users such as digital content creators who need solid graphics and data crunching capabilities, the notebook was under development for 18 months, said Wes Williams, worldwide product marketing manager at Lenovo. It is an addition to the W-line of ThinkPad laptops that includes the ThinkPad W500, introduced earlier this year.

Three optional hard drives, boasting capacities of 320GB apiece, plug into different slots to bring the storage capacity close to 1T byte. Also on offer is a 64GB solid-state drive, and though its current capacity dwarfs hard drive storage, it will increase over time, Williams said.

The W700 is powered by an Intel Core 2 Extreme quad-core mobile processor that runs at a frequency of 2.53GHz and includes 12M bytes of L2 cache. It supports up to 8GB of RAM.

The laptop comes with a 17-inch screen that displays video at a 1920-by-1200 pixel resolution, a notch higher than a high-definition display of 1920 by 1080 pixels. It comes with an Nvidia Quadro FX graphics card, and a Blu-ray player and burner is available as an option.

Interesting multimedia features in the laptop include an optional digitizer and color calibrator. The digitizer, which is next to the touchpad, allows the input of data using a stylus, and the color calibrator adjusts the display's color to accurately reflect image depth.

Priced starting at $2,980, the W700 will be available starting in September through the company's retail partners. The company didn't say if it would be available worldwide.

Lenovo has been pushing itself into different market areas by expanding its laptop offerings. Last week the company announced its first subnotebooks, the IdeaPad S9 and S10, priced under $550.

It also announced a range of laptops targeted at the consumer and business market last month, including the ThinkPad X200, which weighs around 3.58 pounds (1.34 kilograms) and provides close to nine hours of battery life on a single charge.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.