Using the ThinkPad W700 for Photo Editing
Other than being a very expensive HDD data duplicator (see the previous post if you’re not sure what I’m talking about), the ThinkPad W700 was actually designed to get some real computing work done. Given its pedigree as a (no so) lean, mean photo machine, I thought it would be great to take it and use it for some real photo editing to see what it could do.
Several weeks ago I filled up several memory cards with RAW format photos of the very scenic town of Edinburgh. If you’ve ever been there, you’ll know how easy that is to do. Since we’ve entered into a partnership with Microsoft to promote digital photography with their products and the W700, I had the opportunity to try out two products I would have ordinarily avoided in favor of my usual Adobe Lightroom/Photoshop combination. Those two products are Expression Media and Capture One Pro. I’m not here to write a review comparing Adobe vs. Microsoft, but instead to talk about the W700 as a photo editing platform.
I first loaded my memory cards full of files onto the W700, simultaneously copying them to the primary SSD drive and to the included secondary 320GB spinning drive. That way I knew I had an instant backup and a way to revert in case I deleted something I later wanted.
Expression Media is designed more than anything else to be a cataloging (or cataloguing if you prefer) tool designed to help you sort through all types of media you have on your system. These can be photos, videos, or music files. It easily took my raw Nikon .nef files and used the embedded JPEG previews so as to quickly display on screen. At this point, I could view the RAW metadata, apply the ubiquitous 5 star rating system, tag, and drag and drop into folders. There was also a “light table” view which enlarged the photo on a black background. The program looks especially nice in Vista with transparent borders and translucent dialog boxes and that made it more useful when I wanted to select a different image which was hidden behind an open dialog box. The program also appears to support color calibration and editing, but neither was an option for me. Color calibration is not available on RAW data files and I found it especially ironic that the tool wanted to install QuickTime if I clicked the option to edit. I’m not a big fan of QuickTime, so I decided I’d leave the actual editing alone for now. I used Expression Media to quickly get rid of the worst of the shots and narrow them down for editing. The program itself is very fast and I’m sure that even if I didn’t have a high end Core 2 system with an SSD and 4GB of RAM that it would still perform very well.
I was much more interested in Capture One Pro as the tool is definitely a professional level program and one I would not ordinarily have spent money on. Now that I had narrowed down my files to those worthy of spending some time editing, I wanted to see how well the program could handle editing them.
But first, and most important, I calibrated my display. Since the W700 has a built in color calibrator, I had no excuse not to. Ninety seconds later I was finished and could definitely see a difference between the calibrated and non calibrated screen. The only way I could see this process being any easier is if there was a “calibrate on boot” option in which our system would automatically fully boot up and calibrate with the lid closed.
Capture One works very similarly to my “other” usual program, so I was comfortable with how the concept works. Even the dark gray color scheme is familiar. However, since I’ve grown used to a different layout and location of toolsets, I found myself spending a lot of time getting used to finding commands and settings that I KNEW were in there somewhere. The help file is a .pdf and while it offers search and click capabilities, I have grown used to HTML based help and found it took some getting used to. On the up side, for those of you who like printed copy to refer to, this format lends itself quite nicely to print-it-yourself manuals.
For those of you who are not familiar with the concept of programs like Phase One, Aperture, and Lightroom, these are unlike any programs you have ever used before. Most people know that Photoshop and a whole host of other image editing programs will allow you to edit photos – crop, change colors, remove spots, add and remove objects – you get the drift. The issue with these programs is that once you change something and save it, the changes are permanent. Unless you have saved an original copy, you cannot undo your work later; you have to start from scratch.
Phase One is part of a different breed of program. You can do many of the things that most people do in the traditional image editors – change colors, contrast, brightness, shadow/highlight detail, crop, straighten, change perspective, and the like. The key difference is that you NEVER ALTER YOUR ORIGINAL IMAGE. You merely alter how it gets displayed on screen and you can decide at any time to go back to the original image, try variants of the same image, and thousands of other possibilities. Once you understand the concept, the possibilities and control are mind blowing.
I liked that I could pre define cropping to ratios like 4×5 and that the dimensions of the picture would show up on screen as you can see in this picture here. Another function is straightening a photo for those times when your horizon is off kilter or your vertical lines seem to be converging. While straightening isn’t a true substitute for perspective correction, it can serve as an easy way to make things look better when you’re in a hurry. The W700’s integrated Wacom digitizer made it easy to define the vertical lines I wanted to make straight.
I must admit that I haven’t used a digitizer much in my photo editing before and I had to get used to it being different than a touch pad. With a touch pad, if you reach the end of the pad, you can pick your finger up and keep moving the cursor from where you left off. I had this digitizer mapped 1:1 with the screen. If I picked up the stylus and moved it to a different place, the cursor obliged and moved to the correct place. It is a much better way to work, but you have to consciously think whether you’re using a touch pad or a digitizer pad and adjust accordingly.
Pen selection is also convenient for other tasks like moving adjustment sliders like are found in the left hand side of this screen shot…
Or, for choosing and eliminating color casts on this color wheel. In this case, I really liked the color wheel concept of removing color casts (or adding them). I could simply use my stylus on the digitizer pad on a point on the wheel and the results would instantly be reflected in my on-screen image. This color wheel concept is more intuitive for those times when you think “it looks too green” and you can see easily which way on the wheel would fix things.
I proceeded to edit my remaining photos and when I was finished, it was time to export the images with the edits applied. This is where the raw horsepower of the W700 really came into play. I’m sure running a 64 bit version of Vista didn’t hurt either. Each exported image takes a few seconds to process, convert and export. This is not a big deal for one or two images, but I had over 100 I wanted to “fix,” to use an old darkroom term. As it churned through the export process, the fan kicked in and I know the processor really got a workout. In less than 3 minutes, the whole task was done and I had a folder of one hundred 5 MB JPGs for my trouble.
My last step was to make another backup copy to the second hard drive. I thought about burning another copy to a dual layer Blu-ray disc on the W700’s Blu-ray drive–just because I could–but Blu-ray disks are still so darn expensive. I opted for a plain vanilla CD instead. It’s not at the bleeding edge of technology, but much more sensible for only 500MB of data.
All in all, I was extremely impressed with both the W700 as a photo editing platform and also the Phase One Pro/Expression Media software combo. And yes, I even liked using Vista. It was quite convenient to be able to sit on my couch and edit photos vs. just sitting at my desk workstation like I normally do. I could get used to this.
For more information on the ThinkPad W700 designed for photographers, head on over to photolaptop.com.
Lenovo Meet the Modder Dean Liou
Lenovo Meet the modder- Chris Blarsky Dairy 2
Lenovo Meet the modder- Chris Blarsky Dairy 1
Lenovo H320 desktop
November 25th, 2008 7:08 pm
Good marketing but … No one will use 6 bit TN panel for serious photo editing while there are more proper display technologies available for many years.
November 25th, 2008 7:24 pm
The W700 would have been even more impressive with a higher quality RGB-LED-based display, which in turn then would offer to show the full spectrum of the Adobe RGB color space for photo editing. – That would be the next step to include or offer for a future enhanced W701 model, if it is meant for serious photographers and color artists as a sort of notebook based color workstation.
However, the W700 is an impressive, feature-rich desktop notebook with a lot of power for non-trivial color and video editing work.
November 26th, 2008 6:20 am
photolaptop.com is the first site I have ever seen which requires Silverlight to see any of it. Consequently I can see none of it (silverlight is not available for my platform). However I doubt I am the target audience for this particular model (clutching my beloved X40)
November 26th, 2008 7:32 am
vkyr: No. There is no proof that CCFL backlight wouldn’t able to provide wider gamut. But it is for sure than TN panel technology can not provide any level of color accuracy due limited 6 bit resolution and no stable viewing angle. It can NOT be improved by any kind of backlight type.
Wider-gamut backlight is meaningful together with serious panel technologies only which are x-IPS or S-PVA now. So called “RGB LED + TN” hype is just poor marketing trick to sell the cheap TN crap to customers.
November 26th, 2008 9:38 am
Guys — I know loud and clear your view on the different panel technologies, but I heavily disagree that the W700 display is “crap” as you keep putting it. Side by side with my T61, and yes, even the venerable T42p with IPS, the W700’s display looks great. IPS technology would have made it look better, sure, but who really reads displays from 160 degrees offset anyway?
Adding beyond a 6 bit panel requires us to “spin” the systemboard to a new version. It is not simply as easy as going out and procuring a few thousand.
I realize I’ve opened the floodgates and encouraged you to keep goading us on this topc by responding, but have you even seen the W700 in person?
November 26th, 2008 11:09 am
It is not about 160 degrees but color uniformity. TN panels have actually no viewing angle because single solid color does not look uniform on the screen surface unless you watch it from several meters
You are right, I haven’t had a chance to see the display in person because I doubt I could find a shop which would have a single box in stock, consindering the high price. In any case, making series of pictures of the display (various viewing angles, black color in dark etc.) side by side to “the best notebook ever made”- T60p UXGA IPS would help us to figure out how good or bad the panel really is.
As for more than 6-bit inteface, ok. Actually I don’t insist on true 8-bit colors here, I just want a good display with balanced parameters and good overall quality. Especially regarding contrast (at least 500:1), low backlight bleeding, reasonable viewing angles (moving head by five centimeters shouldn’t make any difference), non-flicker dithering (if any) and so-so white color which is not blueish nor redish. None of current notebook display is able to provide them, they looks like first generation of LCD panels ten years ago. Washed out, excessive backlight bleeding, uneven backlight, colors changing by slight moving your head by several centimeters only, no black color etc.
November 26th, 2008 11:34 am
Continues … The reason I’m advocating for IPS (or any other non-TN technology) panels here is that they have proven to deliver good standards of overall quality I have mentioned in [5]. The color accuracy is not my primary intention here, those superior FlexView displays were 6-bit only anyway. They had delivered high and persistent quality of other parameters like contrast, black color, backlight uniformity and viewing angles.
I have noticed that Lenovo no longer provides manufacturer information for display FRUs. We know Lenovo has various suppliers of single component. Unfortunately they are not similar in terms of quality at all. Lets say I can get 15″ WSXGA+ panel from LG or Samsung. For Lenovo it is “similar” display but the difference is very noticeable. That was another advantage of FlexView displays, there weren’t such big differences in quality among various suppliers (Boe-Hydis, IDTech, LG) because the technology doesn’t allow to make such horrible displays like TN does.
November 26th, 2008 12:38 pm
viewing angles aside, IPS and AFFS notebook displays are all 6-bit, leaving no notebook absolutely ideal for color-critical pre-press work. however, in all my years of professional design and photography done on a 6-bit IPS/AFFS/TN display while mobile, i have yet to meet a client who knew that i used a 6-bit display to complete a particular project.
having not yet used or seen a W700 in person, i can’t say whether or not its display is up to scratch. however, i certainly wouldn’t judge it based on fuzzy TN vs. IPS logic since we all know that designers/photographers have been successfully using TN mac and sony notebook displays for years now.
arguing about something one has never seen or used first-hand is silly.
November 26th, 2008 12:40 pm
(i should also add that i’d like to see IPS/AFFS displays return as well, even though that’s not the point of this discussion.)
November 26th, 2008 6:57 pm
Puppy: I’ve mainly talked about the color gamut and thus presentable colors out of defined color space and here RGB-LEDs per se offer a wider selection out of the color gamut than plain CCFL and single color LEDs (even on 6 Bit notebook interfaces). – See here for example some common gamut reference comparison for different backlight types:
http://powerelectronics.com/po.....-gamut.jpg
TN panel technology is without doubt the most simple and poor one, it’s only advantage for end users is, that these are cheap and offer fast response times. For the industry the TN panel advantages are, that these are very production cost efficient and thus they are nowadays the main mass pabulum.
PVA based panel technology is in quality one step above TN panels with quite better viewing angles and a better contrast behavior, but usually lower response times. IPS based panel technology is still another step above the PVA panel technology, offering the best viewing angles and most stable contrasts related to the viewing angles.
However, PVA and IPS panels are generally of better quality than TN panels, but are also more expensive than TN panels. Another problem is, that you nowadays will rarely find any IPS notebook panels at all beside those few available in smaller sizes with build digitizers for TabletPCs. Most panel manufactures sadly dropped their IPS based notebook panel productions and thus these are no longer available in mass productions at all.
So the overall problem is, that the panel industry and nearly all notebook vendors don’t see any demand in producing/offering higher quality notebook panels anymore. The reasons therefor are more cost efficient mass mainstream productions, the mass consumer glossy widescreen panel market and so on.
Better quality TFT panel technologies (PVA or even IPS based panel technologies) are nowadays only found in higher priced desktop TFT monitors and TFT-TVs and a few TabletPCs. – When looking over the “DisplaySearch” forecasts, I doubt that this scenario might change at all in a near future!
November 26th, 2008 7:20 pm
ADD-ON:
I just now stumbled over this blog entry here *”Top 5 Laptops for Displaying the Color Gamut”*:
–> http://markzware.com/blogs/top.....008/10/14/
However, I don’t know if the shown gamut values for those notebooks are entirely correct, but according that blog posting…
5. Lenovo W700 – 72% Gamut
4. Acer Aspire 8920G – 90% Gamut
3. HP EliteBook 8730w – 16 million colors (96% gamut)
2. Dell Precision M6400 – 100% Gamut
1. Sony VAIO AW – 137% Gamut (???)
November 26th, 2008 9:32 pm
It is typical chicken-egg problem
Notebook manufacturers says that there are no suppliers and LCD panel manufacturers that there are no customers. The fact is: it was possible six years ago so I’m just demanding at least the same level of quality. Is it too much ? Would you except to buy a notebook with 100 MHz CPU or 128 MB RAM only these days ? No. But it would be cheaper, wouldn’t be ?
The high prices of non-TN panels are another story. You can find very cheap IPS or S-PVA monitors on the market these days. Well, the quality does not reach top NEC or Eizo models but it is still far better than any TN model (BTW the magic response time is another marketing trick). LG.Philips is currently the biggest producer of consumer-oriented IPS panels. They have made latest series of 15″ SXGA+ panels for ThinkPads. Just ask them … What’s the price of current tablet-pc (AFFS) panels anyway ? Is it double or tripple ?
Everything is matter of price. I’m willing to spend another 200$ or more for decent display quality and I know I’m not alone. I don’t need any rocket-science technology. I just want the quality I could get few years ago. Why it can not be available as an option ?
[11] The color gamut values depends on what color space they have chosen to compare. I had to stop reading the article when I reached to:”… this light is insufficient for displaying much of the desirable color gamut” to save my health
Marketing, marketing, marketing …
November 27th, 2008 7:45 pm
I think “John Profit” will tell the planning and marketing guys, that if production costs are high and earnings possibly low, the resulting product might get too expensive for the common market and thus they usually won’t sell much units of it. That’s usually the problem with products for minorities, if it isn’t some sort of absolute “must have” luxury product, in which case other rules might apply.
So it’s all relative and depends on the different points of view. – Marketing guys always seem to have here their special individual point of view, namely usually trying to suggest and selling you, whatever it might be, as the next best thing since sliced bread.
Back to to notebook panel technologies, the industry and mass market nowadays sadly dictates the overall tendency that panels have mostly all to be widescreen and glossy mirrors. That said you can easily guess and know what panel technology type is finally dominating. – As indicated above, I don’t see that this actual trend might change very soon. But who knows, I still have hopes, that the industry and market will recognize sometime that low quality glossy panels aren’t on everyones must have wish list.
November 28th, 2008 9:25 pm
Hell, I’m a 3d/video guy. As long is the colour is ‘very good’ for a notebook I’m not fussed – it certainly blows most competitors out of the water, except maybe the dell workstation, but that doesn’t have a calibrator.
November 29th, 2008 10:07 am
Puppy said:
Everything is matter of price. I’m willing to spend another 200$ or more for decent display quality and I know I’m not alone. I don’t need any rocket-science technology. I just want the quality I could get few years ago. Why it can not be available as an option ?
That’s why I bought my T42p before they sold off for $2800, and bought a T60p used for $800 (even when T61p’s were around new).
to Matt Kohut:
How about making it easier to swap for our desired display technology (S-IPS/AFFS)? While not exactly the easiest task, it lets us Flexview fans have our S-IPS/AFFS panels while relieving pressure to have it done by the factory. It doesn’t have to be at too much of a design cost to make it easier; it only means that there are far less mechanical/interface issues with doing the swap.
November 29th, 2008 3:56 pm
BTW, LG-Philips offers with their 17.1″ “LP171WU5″ a mass production panel which offers to have…
- RGB LED based backlighting
- an 8 bit interface (thus offers 16.7M colors)
- WUXGA (1920X1200) resolution
- 300 nits
- min. contrast of 500:1
- 100% Color Saturation
- viewing angles H/V of 160/130
- 8 ms GTG response time
- …and so on…
…even that panel weights 800g and consumes 15W, it might be a good candidate for the 17″ ThinkPad W7xx series, under the aspect of a photo editing desktop replacement notebook.
Related to IPS panel technology, even I’am actually writing this text on a “Thinkpad with an 15″ IDTech UXGA IPS, aka the so called IBM FlexView panel”, the Thinkpad/IDTech area has finished some years ago. Since in 2001 Chi Mei Optoelectronics (CMO) acquired International Display Technology (IDTech) from IBM, then in 2005 CMO sold IDTech, the formerly IBM’s liquid crystal display (LCD) products division, to Sony. Later 15″ IPS notebook panels from LG-Philips have been taken as Thinkpad FlexView panels, but these panels in the meantime have also disappeared from the market.
As said before, you can actually just find some *real notebook* IPS technology based panels for TabletPCs. Everything else with IPS technology based panels can be only found in bigger sized LCD monitors and huge TV LCD displays. – It’s generally hard to find something other than TN panels for notebooks in mass production on the market among all LCD panel manufacturers. – It’s somehow odd that the overall notebook panel trend went into such directions, even for quality business notebooks, but such is the overall actual situation on the notebook market.
November 29th, 2008 5:38 pm
vkyr: Oh yes – RGB LED backlight buzzword strikes again
What about golden cables, they might improve colors, contrast and viewing angles by 370% !
8-bit interface to TN panel has no real use. All TN panels are natively 6-bit so it might work as LUT with additional dithering to mimic more colors. Some types of dithering are very disturbing because it looks like broken neon light (older types of 15″ WUXGA Samsung for example)
All the mess is like spending extreme effort to overclock a 1 GHz CPU to 1.8 GHz while the technology for 1.8 GHz one is already available and not too much pricy. Marketing makes people dumb … :-/
Well, my dream configuration is 12″ 1400×1050 (or 11″ 1366×768) IPS anyway so these Tablet-PC displays are getting very close. I really liked the X61 mod published here few weeks ago. That would be perfect configuration.
November 29th, 2008 7:33 pm
For a 12″ 1400×1050 resolution see the TP X61t and the Hydis HV121P01 TabletPC panel. 11″ 1366×768 panels are always popular among the Sony TZ/TT series lines, but those in the Vaios are glare panels and I believe these are the LTD111EWAS TN panel from TMD.
However, you actually won’t find real notebook IPS panels (excluding some TabletPC panels with build-in digitizers) with these resolutions. – In general it always seems, that lcd panel and notebook vendors don’t see any need or demand in IPS notebook panel technologies for the market. In former times also only few panel manufacturers offered IPS notebook panels and then mainly only in 15″ size.
Personally I would prefer an available full range of matt IPS notebook panels on the market, so beside 11″ and 12″ also 13,3″ and 14″ panels, but I doubt that I will see some of these in the near future at all.
Buzzwords? FlexView, CristalView, CristalClear, TrueColor, X-Black, Ultrasharp… the market and industry is full of them!
November 30th, 2008 7:57 am
I was almost dead set on the top 18.4″ Sony AW model with the RBG LED that’s advertised to cover 137% of Adobe Color Gamut, I read a review over laptopmag claiming 180 degree viewing angles, I also searched all notebook forums and everyone thought that would be an IPS screen.
It was good that I decided to check it out in person before I order one. It was such a huge let down. That was just another TN screen with mediocre viewing angles, and is now completely out of my list.
So the whole “RGB” (no matter CCFL or LED) thing along with ___ (insert a random number here) % color gamut is just another “cheap” trick to make money.
November 30th, 2008 6:13 pm
Ben: Yes. In other words the different type of backlight will improve color gamut but the quality of TN matrice in front of this backlight is so bad that the whole thing does not make sense and visually still looks awful. TN will *always* look awful with any kind of backlight. The TN technology can not be improved to be in par of other LCD technologies. That’s it.
Using “wide gamut” backlight in TN panel is like replacing a 4200 rpm HDD with SSD in Pentium II notebook hoping you get performance of current machines. Yes, the HDD itself would be faster but the overall performance of such machine remains still poor
Using different type of panel (cheapest IPS, S-PVA or A-MVA) with cheapest and “non-wide” gamut CCFL backlight would deliver much better display quality in every aspect. But those managers will bring more and more buzzwords for outdated TN panels (LED backlight, RGB LED backlight, DreamColor, 100000000:1 dynamic contrast, 0.0001 ms response time, UltraMegaSuperGlossy and so on …) and only few of us will know that’s just another hopeless trick.
December 1st, 2008 1:41 pm
The more reason to at least make it possible to do a drop-in swap for what panels do exist. Even if it means finding a Tablet-PC panel of the closest size/interface, it would be a lot better than just TN.
December 1st, 2008 3:37 pm
In the notebook panel sector, see for example…
http://lcdtech.no-ip.info/en/d.....panels.htm
…you can see, that there are almost only TN panels available on the market, except those few 12.1″ AFFS panels from BOS-Hydis for TabletPCs.
If the lack of IPS technology based notebook panels on the market doesn’t change, there will also for the future be no higher quality panels (those who will also be color contrast stable over higher viewing angles) available for notebooks.
Technically if a TN panel has a real *true 8 bit interface*, it then uses 128 gray scales from a 8 bit data signal input, so a max total of 16,7M colors are derived then from the resultant 3×8 bit = 24 bit data (2^24 = 16777216). In contrast here TN panels with 6 bit interface and Hi-FRC dithering etc. are no true 8 bit panels and usually should have to be indicated so. – However marketing tricks are another story here and some vendors like Samsung for example might even name their 6 bit + 2 bit dithering panels as 8 bit panels.
See for example: http://lcdtech.no-ip.info/en/d.....panels.htm
…where for most TN panels it’s listed if they use 6 bit + FRC (only 16.2M colors) or if they have a true 8 bit interface (thus 16.7 M colors).
But of course the remaining visible problem for TN panels (bad color contrasts for higher vertical and horizontal viewing angles) still persists independently from the signal interface and LED backlighting.
RGB LEDs physically provide a wider color gamut since the LED’s color wavelengths have a higher purity level than fluorescent lamps etc. However it might be on the other side generally questionable of what value a higher color gamut is, if the used panel technology to show up this wider color spectrum is itself of limited capabilities.
December 2nd, 2008 2:33 pm
Sadly, glossy TN panels does seem to be the way things have gone. On the plus side, the displays in the Thinkpad tablets are great (12.1″ Boe Hydis).
I have an x200 Tablet with a 12.1″ WXGA AFFS+ display with an LED backlight. It is a fabulous panel (very bright, with color stability from any angle). Tablets also have the advantage of having the Wacom digitizer (w/ 256 pressure levels) built right into the display (another plus for photo editing).
However, tablets are not without their limits. They tend to be offered only with 12.1″ panels. They almost always use integrated graphics, low voltage processors, and eschew other performance features for weight savings. That being said, I think the x61t (if you prefer SXGA+) and x200t (if you prefer brightness, a full keyboard, and a cool/light machine) make great mobile photo editing platforms as long as you don’t need excessive power.
December 2nd, 2008 7:13 pm
The only thing that this will make me do is just extend the warranty and/or get what models do have IPS/AFFS. After seeing Flexview on an A31p, I am appalled at how quality has been forced down. No gloss, RGBLED, and/or LED backlight trickery can hide that it is just a TN panel with all the associated faults.
Yes, most of the newer panels are TN. What about making it possible for existing stock to be fitted without most of the interface issues and/or issues with the overly tight fit?
Maybe the Reserve Edition should have been canned in exchange for something with the higher quality panels that are still out there(along with half the ~$5000 pricetag).
I’d believe that Lenovo does have the clout to get more than TN into a laptop. However, they seem to be trashing a brand with the full knowledge that nobody else will go their direction in quality.
December 3rd, 2008 6:35 pm
Ok back to topic, since I believe it’s obvious and often enough expressed that most people do generally wished to have also in notebooks other panels than TN panels.
What I personally like in the W700 and what sets it clearly apart from other such desktop replacement notebooks in this class is, that it comes with build-in calibration capabilities and an integrated Wacom digitizer.
Even I don’t know how accurate both of these work inside the W700, but beside the working scenarios Matt talked about and showed, I can imagine some other working domain scenarios too, where the W700 would be an ideal machine for. – I dare say that beside photo and color editing the W700 probably would also be an ideal desktop replacement notebook for CAD/CAM or video workers too.
December 3rd, 2008 6:48 pm
Ok, I’m just reading article “Samsung: OLED Notebooks In 2010″ http://www.trustedreviews.com/.....In-2010/p1 I don’t expect mass production of OLED displays right in 2010 but I hope it will open opportunities to get better LCD panels technology back for notebooks due lower pricing.
December 4th, 2008 1:21 am
Are the color strips on the mouse buttons missing again?
It’s getting frustrating to stick to lenovo
I wish I weren’t addicted to the Trackpoint which keeps me from moving to a sony 13″ laptop with a medium quality display (much better than TN displays)
December 4th, 2008 1:08 pm
That Sony has TN display as well for sure but a bit better quality that those cheap panels Lenovo buys.
December 7th, 2008 12:01 pm
while on it… it would be wise, IMHO, in a future hw revision to add a e-sata port, to the laptop itself (and not only the dock) …
(also, at the 15,4” – it’s sad that there are no direct equivalent to the quad-core Dell’s M4400…)
December 8th, 2008 4:36 am
just another idea:
For power saving issues (and space as well as weight) while having high performance: Wouldn’t it be possible to design an asymmetric architecture with one high end double core for computational tasks, and a second double core for low-cost things like surfing the web, system monitoring stuff and the like? Who (besides me and a bunch of other weird people) will run really parallel stuff on their notebook? It’s most of the time well separated programs that just profit of the multi-core architecture as they do not have to wait for time slices on the same processor…
If the power-saving processor is able to shutdown the big one and wake it up without great loss of time if some severe tasks has to be done this would add quite some battery time to the high end notebooks!
cheers
Hecke
December 19th, 2008 6:14 am
I don’t know anything about the technical stuff, TN, APFS… whatever…
But I do have an X60s, an X61t a new X200s (the “LED” backlit, 11 hour on one charge) and an old Powerbook G4 15″ and a MacBook Pro 17″, and I just want to share some personal experiences.
First of all: being a huge ThinkPad-addict, I still must admit that the MBP 17″ probably has the best and most comfortable display closely folowed by the X61t. They both have superior viewing angles and I think their colors are very consistent.
The X60s is comfortable, however the screen is not bright enough in sharp daylight.
I’m still getting used to the X200s — it seems “fuzzy” in a weird way that I can’t describe. It definately doesn’t have viewing angles comparable to the MBP or the X60t, but the “fuzz” could also be a result of the higher DPI causing fonts to be smaller?
For photo editing the built in digitizer (although with “only” 128 presure levels) on the X61t is pretty neat, but obviously the HDD and CPU and onboard GPU is not fast enough for no-lag high res photo editing… But it get the job done in a mobile <2kg package…
December 22nd, 2008 12:00 am
I am still own a R50p with a FlexView. I talked a friend into buying a ThinkPad the other day. The display was crap. How do I convince people that a $1,300 laptop from 2008 is better than an old R50? Come on Lenovo! Get it together!
December 29th, 2008 4:40 am
well, well, It is just.. cool!
February 9th, 2009 2:44 am
I noticed a lot of people in the comments going on about 6-bit dithering. I’ve got a Lenovo X200, and noticed some annoying dithering artifacts occurring in the very dark grays—this is especially annoying when editing photos. I’m really depressed to think this might be an unfixable hardware issue, instead of a driver problem. This is not a problem with a 6 year old X23 that the X200 replaced!
Here are some macro shots I took of the dithering effect: Weird dithering “bug” on Lenovo X200 running Ubuntu. Any comments would be appreciated.
February 27th, 2009 10:23 am
Fact in business is that as long as there’s any decent amount of buyers willing to buy whatever and haven’t even seen anything better, it’s a win win. On the laptop market there is new customer born every day and if all she has ever seen is a laptop with TN panel, how would one reasonably expect for her to know anything better is even possible to make?
There was a poll on Anandtech with couple thousand responses that indicated most people would pay more for laptops with IPS panels. Unfortunately if they are only willing to pay $200 more and the IPS is $200 more expensive than TN, according to Economics 101 you can’t offer that option since there needs to be atleast 10x profit margin for every dollar of the actual price in retail, thus the price of IPS laptop compared to TN laptop must be $2000 more and it just doesn’t look that sensible anymore for the average user.
Try and explain to marketing how to sell identical looking laptops with large price difference when the specs are 1:1 identical to allow for “panel lottery” scam, practised by Lenovo among others (just look at Lenovo specs for their models 24″ high end desktop models R41HBEU T41HBEU, identical specs with $200 price difference!).
February 27th, 2009 10:53 am
And to people thinking simply having IPS panel fixes everything. There are 3 pieces to puzzle: Backlight, Panel, polarizer/coating etc. There are some crappy IPS as seen here, compared to a good one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgWbsOeFKms
ps. that good quality IPS there costs same as Lenovo panel lottery model R41HBEU. I don’t know how Lenovo is planning to sell the 2440x when the competition has been years ahead, years ago!