Thinkpad W701 Owners Lounge

[Ingvarr]

Well, after 4 weeks of wait I've received one a week ago (config 25003BU).
I intend to build ultimate laptop using it as base, thanks to Lenovo platform openness (and MXM 3.0 too )

Now answering some questions splitting from thread in other subforum

Hey sorry for the late post just didn't think it was important to answer. Yeah i am happy that the w701 is offering a rgbled screen. I am getting my alienware m17x R2 with a rgbled screen and i can't wait to compare my precision and that one. I have had the samsung before and the reds were horrible! Do you have a Samsung panel? I love Samsung products!

The RGB LED 1920x1200 wide gamut anti-glare display is LTN170CT08-L01 from Samsung.
The gamut (white) in comparison to sRGB (gray):


The reds colours are not issue at all. They are of extremely vivid scarlet.
It's white colour I didn't exactly like, it looks like slightly pinkish to me, even when colorimeter insisted on it being correct temperature (same happens to me with OLED screens). However manual calibration fixed that.

[lead_org]

wished that Lenovo could bring the IPS LCD to the 17 inch range.

[rcruk]

Hi, I'm considering joining this exclusive club, can you tell me a little about your experience of owning/using a W701?

Thanks.

[menos]

Hi, I'm considering joining this exclusive club, can you tell me a little about your experience of owning/using a W701?

Thanks.

Well, I use X200s on a daily basis and I appreciate the same keyboard layout (save the touchpad, which I keep disabled). The tablet is a bonus (works well with Windows 7's handwriting recognition tools and with Photoshop).
The calibrator works well (in my case it is paired with X-Rite Passport Color Checker profiles) and together with a configured Photoshop it yields satisfying color reproduction.
Four core/eight thread processor is more than enough for my compilation tasks (Visual Studio 2010). 96 GPGPU cores will, I hope, help programming in Open CL.
On battery, it works c.a. 2h. In the idle mode, my W701 consumes approximately 38-40W.
I was however little disappointed when noticed that I need to purchase separately the cage and rubber bumpers for a secondary disk... There were no extra trackpoint caps in a box.

[Ingvarr]

I am excited with my W701, because I don't mind purchasing things to tune it up - in fact I bought it solely as a platform in customizing in mind.
- it has industrial design, yes. All it looks are centered around *function*, not "looking good". I don't buy 2.5K machine for show, I buy it for doing it's job spectacularly. And you can see Lenovo put a lot of thought in the *function* of the design.
- for such powerful machine its very sleek. I mean, it almost as powerful as some Alienwares or Sagers, being twice as thin and half as light
- speaking of Alienwares, W701 is also *silent*. Pretty quiet even on full load (quite a feat for quad core i7 and high-end graphics card). Cooling system design is marvelous.
- no glossy plastics in design, yay! So no fingerprint smudges, and no need to use microfiber cloth for cleaning to avoid scratches
- matte screen. No more seeing yourself like in the mirror. WUXGA RGB LED screen is great - brightness, contrast and colour are top notch. It also 16:10 - not squished vertically as many other modern 16:9s!
- keyboard. Proper keys, not this fancy new "chiclet" (other word for "flat"). Plenty of travel.
- no sensor buttons, all buttons are physical with good tactile feedback
- i also like indicator positioning under the lid (and on the other side when lid is closed). hinge design makes display raise quite a bit when opened - quite ergonomic
- you get all peripheral devices you can imagine. eSATAp, USB 3.0, Bluetooth, color calibrator, wacom tablet, fingerprint scanner, VT-d, etc. - all in one machine
- thinklight. Basically you have a built-in tiny keyboard&little of table lamp
- openness. That's was my huge reason to buy W701. I mean, all service manuals & schematics available online. You can buy parts online. How cool is that? Not to mention this laptop is actually MXM 3.0. I fully intend to try to cram Radeon HD 5870 in it
- the LID closes by proper latch, not by spring like on lot of modern "consumer" laptops - you don't have to pry it open
- great construction. Magnesium alloy chassis - that what makes it ultra-stable while being only about 4cm thin. Disassembly not hard at all. Spill-proof keyboard

Well, I can go on and on like that

Maybe some not so good things:

- battery life. Yep, it is small. About 2 hours. I haven't got much more than that on any other powerful 17" laptops I've owned, so I am totally fine with that. This is desknote anyway, not indented to use on the go for too long anyway.
- speakers. They produce very clear sound (actually big plus for them not being "tinny"), but due to size totally lack bass and stereo separation. For me being used to Toshiba's Harman kardon it was quite a downgrade. But - speakers are easely upgraded, you can just get any great mini USB speakers that available out there. I'd prefer upgrading speakers over upgrading the screen for example
I use headphones a lot and I appreciate Lenovo thought of actually placing headphone DAC circuitry on the separate mini-board, which separated from the main board => makes sound in the headphones amazingly clear from system noise.

[Aikimox]

@Ingvarr,
Finally! It's high time we got some feedbacks/reviews of this system, which is available for quite awhile.

Could you make a small review perhaps?
Please run some benchmarks, post the temps, etc.
And the most important - pictures!


Will eagerly follow your progress.
I too have a business system as a platform for customization 8740w, W701's direct competitor.
It will be great to compare the cooling, performance, etc...

[rcruk]

(snip)

All good Ingvarr, exactly the kindof stuff I wanted to know... it being fairly quiet is something I never thought about, whilst I should have, my present desktop that I'm replacing it with has a noisy gfx card cooler that has irritated me for some time now! What you say is much what I got the impression of from what I see on the Lenovo site, only you've given me some solid examples of how their thinking impacts on the user. Thanks!

I wonder, how useful is the wacom tablet, as a CS4 and CAD user you think it will be more than just a novelty?

[Ingvarr]

The fans actually are so quiet, my 7200RPM Scorpio Black noise started to really annoy me. In the end I've replaced the "big data" HDD with 5400RPM 640Gb Samsung Spinpoint M7E - its almost silent, has great throughput (almost like 7200). Don't need very fast data drive anyway, since all stuff needing to be quick is on Vertex 2 SSD

Well, for me wacom table is just a novelty - I am a graphics programmer, so primarily type a lot and watch a lot of pretty animations So I didn't really need pen tablet, but it's mandatory if you need a colour calibrator - and in any case, this was the cheapest "all-in" model, so I've kind of got it as freebie.
As far as I can see, it's working pretty well, I can scribble Pressure-sensitive too. Completely integrated in the Windows 7 - for example, for pen input & such. You get several spare pen tips.

Just popped in additional 2Gigs of RAM (they go on eBay at totally bargain prices now), for the total of 6Gigs. 4 DIMM slots are really useful
Current WEI snapshot:

I think I need to upgrade a graphics card

Verbose:

Windows System Assessment Tool
> Run Time 00:00:00.00
> CPU LZW Compression                          272.88 MB/s
> CPU AES256 Encryption                        130.48 MB/s
> CPU Vista Compression                        569.88 MB/s
> CPU SHA1 Hash                                801.57 MB/s
> Uniproc CPU LZW Compression                  82.23 MB/s
> Uniproc CPU AES256 Encryption                51.17 MB/s
> Uniproc CPU Vista Compression                158.73 MB/s
> Uniproc CPU SHA1 Hash                        369.59 MB/s
> Memory Performance                           11647.52 MB/s
> Direct3D Batch Performance                   491.19 F/s
> Direct3D Alpha Blend Performance             501.46 F/s
> Direct3D ALU Performance                     294.52 F/s
> Direct3D Texture Load Performance            280.02 F/s
> Direct3D Batch Performance                   488.15 F/s
> Direct3D Alpha Blend Performance             496.75 F/s
> Direct3D ALU Performance                     266.66 F/s
> Direct3D Texture Load Performance            225.22 F/s
> Direct3D Geometry Performance                352.11 F/s
> Direct3D Geometry Performance                195.49 F/s
> Direct3D Constant Buffer Performance         276.70 F/s
> Video Memory Throughput                      20045.60 MB/s
> Dshow Video Encode Time                      2.51143 s
> Media Foundation Decode Time                 0.75212 s
> Disk  Sequential 64.0 Read                   207.95 MB/s          7.3
> Disk  Random 16.0 Read                       154.67 MB/s          7.5
> Responsiveness: Average IO Rate              0.74 ms/IO          7.9
> Responsiveness: Grouped IOs                  8.27 units          7.5
> Responsiveness: Long IOs                     2.49 units          7.9
> Responsiveness: Overall                      20.57 units          7.7
> Responsiveness: PenaltyFactor                0.0

[rcruk]

The main criticism I've seen so far of the W701 is that it's ugly and bulky. It's hard to tell from images on the net, also it's hard to get to grips with its size, anyone have a good image with something to scale it against, a can of drink, a ruler or something?? The only alternative would be to pay £1000 more for a dell with the same specs and a sleek looking M6500 silver base. I thought I'd try something other than dell, my desktop was from dell and though it was a good purchase and has lasted well, I'm interested in trying something different.

In terms of the specs they look exactly what I need and I'm getting the impression overall that Lenovo tend to be reliable and their service good. Do you find this to be the case?

[Ingvarr]

Huh? I've seen M6400/M6500 in the flesh and it is not smaller by any means. What given you such impression?

The dimensions of W701 closed is 41cm x 31cm x 4cm

The "bulky" criticism of W701 I've personally seen comes from people who didn't use many 17" desknotes at all. It's more criticism of 17" size.
As person who used solely several 17" size laptops I could say that W701 is very compact for 17" of this power. The only one I've seen slightly smaller was Toshiba P100 (and this was long ago). HP 8730w is maybe slightly (half cm?) thinner too, but at the expense of second hard drive bay...

I haven't used Lenovo service at all, so I couldn't say anything here. This is my first Thinkpad