Lenovo Launches First Dual-Screen Notebook

After weeks of leaked product images and videos online, Lenovo today is officially announcing the world's first dual-screen notebook, the ThinkPad W700ds mobile workstation. The ThinkPad W700ds offers users significantly more screen real-estate by combining a 17-inch screen and a second adjustable 10.6-inch display.

Two Screens Are Better Than One

Many workstation users, particularly photographers, typically work with two monitors. Keeping this in mind, Lenovo designed the ThinkPad W700ds mobile workstation with two screens to eliminate the compromise of having only one display when operating in a mobile environment. Research has shown that extra screen real-estate with multiple monitors helps maximize user productivity versus single display solutions. Digital photographers can have an image open on the main screen and have all of the Photoshop tools open on the second screen so the image and the software don't have to compete for screen space. Measuring almost 40 percent of the 17-inch primary screen, the 10.6-inch second screen gives users extra screen real-estate close to the size of a Lenovo IdeaPad S10 netbook.

The second screen slides out from the display lid behind the primary screen, and it can also be tilted to fit a user’s viewing angle by up to 30 degrees. Despite the second screen with independent adjustments, the second display only adds a few millimeters of additional thickness to the single-display version of the ThinkPad W700 mobile workstation.

The primary screen features an optional 400-nit WUXGA display which provides up to twice the brightness of earlier ThinkPad mobile workstations. The primary screen’s 72 percent wide color gamut enables more than 50 percent greater color intensity for better color accuracy.

Innovative Features and Performance ... and Did We Mention Two Screens?

Of course, while the second screen is likely why most people are interested in this notebook, the ThinkPad W700ds mobile workstation still offers all the unique features and capabilities offered in the ThinkPad W700 mobile workstation that included the industry’s first built-in digitizer and built-in color calibrator.

The optional digitizer is perfect for digital content creators as it provides high resolution, pressure sensitive control of the primary screen, the primary and the secondary screen or a specific defined area of either screen. Select models also come with a color calibrator that quickly and automatically adjusts the screen’s color to give true-to-life images and rendering 2D and 3D images, which are important items for managing color-critical work.

The ThinkPad W700ds mobile workstation includes choices of Intel mobile quad core and extreme processors with optional dual hard drives with RAID configurations and is also available with NVIDIA Quadro FX mobile graphics. This mobile workstation offers up to 8GB of DDR3 memory and your choice of solid state drive storage and traditional hard disk drives for a maximum of 960 GB of possible total storage.

The ThinkPad W700ds mobile workstation also comes with an optional DVD burner/player and high speed UDMA compact flash reader, support for Dual Link DVI, Display Port and VGA, a 7-in-1 multicard reader and five USB ports. In addition to WiFi, select models support WiMAX for staying connected away from the office. Security features include an optional fingerprint reader, a smartcard reader and hard drives with full-disk encryption.

Pricing and Availability

The ThinkPad W700ds mobile workstation is available immediately through www.lenovo.com and business partners. Pricing for models starts at $3,663.

Related Article:

NotebookReview.com review of the ThinkPad W700