Lenovo ThinkPad W700

Cool Yule Rating: 5 stars

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Cool Yule Rating: 5 stars

Price: Starts at $2,499.99

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Description: The Lenovo ThinkPad W700 is like something out of Star Trek. Lenovo refers to this as "the ultimate 17-inch workstation", and it's easy to see why. It features a full size keyboard, which includes a standard numeric keypad, Touch Point, Track Pad, and very cool innovation they call Wacom Digitizer and Pen. It has five USB ports, 1394 (FireWire), Dual Link DVI, DisplayPort, VGA, S/PDIF, eSATA, BluRay/DVD player, and a 7-in-1 multi-media card reader, among other features. For connectivity purposes, WLAN 802.11n, Bluetooth, and Ultra Wideband WiMAX are all available. And that 17-inch display includes WUXGA or WXGA resolution, and comes loaded with an integrated camera. The cool little light above the screen that illuminates the keyboard and is found on all ThinkPads dating back to the Clinton administration – this thing has two.

It can come loaded with 8GB, 2 GB Intel Turbo memory, Intel Core2 Quad Core Extreme processors (2.8 GHz), two independent hard disks (RAID capable), and, if you wish, an NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700M 1GB of dedicated RAM. Unfortunately, it can also come loaded with Vista 64-bit, which is necessary to take advantage of all the wonderful hardware Lenovo crammed into this thing.

My test model came with an Intel Quad Core processor (or four processors), 4GB RAM, Intel Turbo RAM, the NVIDIA 3700, and two hard disks spinning at 7200rpm each …and it still took forever to boot up and/or awaken every time I went to use it. I personally think Windows Vista is a fine operating system that started slow but has really found its place, but this was my first experience with the 64-bit version, and it wasn't a good one. The computer does seem to get faster and load applications quicker the more you use it, which I suspect is as much a function of the Turbo memory as it is the operating system.

The machine itself is a beauty. Many people, myself included, were worried about the ThinkPad line once Lenovo took it over from IBM a few years back. I'm happy to report the machines are still a great quality, and Lenovo seems as committed to reliability and durability as IBM was. They still haven't found a way to defy gravity, though, so you'll notice pretty quickly the computer weighs 8.3 lbs. I think convenience has gotten a bit out of hand, with people willing to spend untold riches on computers like the Macbook Air – so the weight really doesn't bother me. This machine is built to be a workhorse, and it makes no bones about it. The press kit listed some functions they see this computer filling, such as sitting on an oil or gas rig, running applications like CATIA, AutoCAD, ProE, Maya, Tripos Sybyl, and anything Adobe. I only know what about half of those are, and that's only because I roomed with engineers and graphic designers in college. But their laptops didn't run AutoCAD, and I'm pretty sure an Apple computer isn't going to last long on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. There's nothing pretentious here, and you probably won't find a lot of W700s at a Starbucks.