A "laptop" designed for photography?

[Singlemalt]

I stumbled across this announcement while reading engadget - the new lenovo w700.

ThinkPad W700: Lenovo Intros Biggest ThinkPad Yet (videos) | notebooks.com

Thought it was really interesting. I'm a fan of thinkpads and this is the first time I've seen anyone make a laptop with extended colour gamut and a digitizer. Its a beast though - I'm not sure if it really fits with the m8 philosophy but I thought it would be worth posting just in case anyone is interested.

I love my x300 - I would offload all my photos onto it while travelling through europe. It was light, portable and indestructible. And it ran lightroom.

Cheers,
SM.

[Ruhayat]

I'll need to upgrade my old eyes if I'm going to be viewing 1920 x 1200 on a 17-inch screen! Image quality might be better, though, because of the tightly packed pixels.

[rob_x2004]

I stuck with thinkpads because I felt they were better able to handle a bit of a knock and I prefer the red dot in the keypad rather than the gumbi unco touch pad. I notice the adverts now on telly have the Lenovonononono models getting dropped onto the swimming pool deck and splashed with a bucket of water. Since Libby is a bit of a winner too, sounds like good stuff to me.

[ammitsboel]

I like Thinkpads too, and I like the idea of having color calibration and a wacom build in.
But I don't like the Thinkpad screens, this one might be better but it still looks blue even after calibration. Another thing is that the filters in a colorimeter gets bad after about 2 years of use, so the build in one might get bad after this rather short period unless they have done something special?

Maybe you could give it a try at a store and see what it's like?

[sparkie]

man its UGLY..

(compared to my Apple laptop)

[Jamie Roberts]

It's very interesting, and I use love Thinkpads for portable use because they're rugged and reliable and optimised for all kinds of performance things...

But colour is not one of those things, traditionally. I only correct "by the numbers" with them. Why? Well, we'll see if the video card system with the monitor is any good.

My experience with any laptop, from any manufacturer is they're too bright (can't be turned down effectively to match a luminance target), they're terrible if you move your head (off-axis colour shifts--the "shiny" ones from HP etc... are the worst for this) and--most importantly--the LCD panels only have 6bit LUTs (look-up-tables) which means they're dithering just to show you JPEGs Nothing like a little banding!

The new Thinkpad has a brighter screen (blecch), wider colour gamut (that's nice, for sure) and I can't find any spec other than size for the panel itself. My apologies if I've missed it.

Still, it looks like a nice laptop, and I'm sure these points will be discussed. But there's a reason an EIZO LCD costs more than a decked out laptop

[krabat]

Alright, now the Thinkpads have been criticised for their bluish colours.
So, I have a question to all readers, which brand of notebooks/laptops would you recommend for an acceptable image quality? I am currently looking for a new one, because my old (HP Omnibook 6000) starts to break down - the chassis becomes increasingly tottery and wobbly, no wonder after almost eight years of travelling every week. Nevertheless, I found the quality of the display (1400 x 1050 pixels) quite good.

Regards, Peter.

[Jamie Roberts]

Originally Posted by krabat

Alright, now the Thinkpads have been criticised for their bluish colours.{snipped}.

I don't think anyone has actually seen one unmediated by a monitor at this point, so I'd take that criticism with a very large amount of salt.

There are currently no laptops worth calibrating out there, IMO. However, many people find that both Macs and Thinkpads have pleasant-looking screens.

I wouldn't use any of them for critical color correction, though, unless I didn't care what they looked like and was using Photoshop's info palette & eye dropper instead. There's more than one way to tell if something has, say, a color cast

This new Thinkpad could raise the bar for laptops, but it all depends on how they've actually implemented the panel...

[krabat]

Thank you for your quick reply. Well, I did not want to perform "serious" colour management using a laptop display, I just want to have an useable display that does not skew the colours too much. So I will take a more close look at the Thinkpads. What about the current HP laptops?

Best regards, Peter.

[Riley]

agree with Jamie
i have a Lenovo C200, more for plans and a database than anything else
the screen was dreadful when i first got it, it was cheap due to dead HDD

i found a thinkpad colour management profile that improved things (X61S-ThinkPad_Display_1024x768)
then i messed about with Power Strip, which allows you to alter colours manually

it isnt as bad now, but i wouldnt use it for serious colour work
i dont know of any better remedies for its cold looking colour

[Jamie Roberts]

Originally Posted by krabat

Thank you for your quick reply. Well, I did not want to perform "serious" colour management using a laptop display, I just want to have an useable display that does not skew the colours too much. So I will take a more close look at the Thinkpads. What about the current HP laptops?

Best regards, Peter.

Peter--none of them "don't skew colours too much" for me Which is another way of saying "they're all fine as long as you don't try to print from them" )

When I say "critical" I actually mean "photographically critical" as in not banding in shadows or skies and not representing magenta as green, etc...

For actual commercially "critical" color matching, you need even more color-smarts and proof prints, ink libraries, etc...

But for any laptop, as I keep saying, they're all generally too bright and not so hot on colour, period.

So all of them are about as good as the next one. This Lenovo is the first one I've heard of being "meant for photographers" though I and I assume the calibration tools aren't simply a gimmick, though they actually might be . I

It's expensive--over $3K to start--and that's a good sign because maybe they've actaully put a good panel and a controllable backlight source in there...instead of just wanting it to work "in the sun" BTW--I just read a rumour that it has an 8bit LUT, which is good for a laptop...but I didn't see that in the press release.

[offshore]

I'm interested in seeing it but I have one reservation going in-Vista.

[sfokevin]

This would go with ones Black M8...

VoodooPC: Blending Art, Innovation and Performance

[poynterama]

Pardon my ignorance, but what does the designation WUXGA mean for the monitor?
I bought an Asus F3JV laptop with a 15.4" WSXGA+ monitor (which runs at 1680x1050) which I've been pretty impressed with

[krabat]

Wikipedia:
WUXGA stands for Widescreen Ultra eXtended Graphics Array and is a display resolution of 1920×1200 pixels (2304000 pixels) with a 16:10 screen aspect ratio.

Regards, Peter.

[michael_b_elmer]

I stumbled over this most interesting report on the Lenovo W700 in HOT Hardware. It's a real dream monster for every M8 and M82. photographer, although it cannot be called ultra portable:

1920 x 1200 screen with Pantone Huey Pro screen calibration, Dual-Link DVI port able to run a Dell 3007 at 2560 x 1600 simultaneously with the built in screen, 2 Raid 0/1 HDD's (2 x 200 mb a@ 7.200 rpm), 2.53 ghz Extreme Core 2 Duo Quad-core CPU, 8 gb ram, Nvidia FX3700 M GPU with 1 GB Vram, Blue-Ray, SD card reader, and integrated Wacom digitizer, all running on Vista 64 bit Ultimate!

Enjoy reading more at:

Lenovo Thinkpad W700 Mobile Workstation - HotHardware