Want to know personal experience with the W701 !Updated!

[ThinkerTinker]

Greetings people,
I am in the market for the W701 with a digitizer, but before I commit to one, I would like to get some feedback about the unit, if possible, before I post a WTB in the marketplace. Mostly personal experience, likes and dislikes, things to keep in mind? This would be my first thinkpad though I have wanted one for a while.

I know it is outdated, but the fact that it uses older hardware is a plus for me, for some older applications that I still like to run. It is replacing an older M1730 that was maxed out and just doesn't cut it and a Dell M6500 that is having some issues.

What is the market value for these things? So few of them have come up but they seem to be around the $1000 range give or take.

Is it true that Lenovo mandates that you use the FX 3800m designed specifically for them?

[ThinkerTinker]

Really, nobody?

[ajkula66]

I'm just going to say: welcome to the forum!

Little insight that I had to offer is already in your thread on NBR.

Happy hunting.

[Medessec]

Heh. Sorry for the delay. Understand that these units aren't particularly commonplace... it took me a couple of months to track down the parts to finish off my W700. I understand you're looking at W701s, but the W700 is pretty much the same, just the W701 has slightly better hardware.

I have a W700 with a digitizer, and although I'm mostly accustomed to using the panel on an X60/X61, or other tablet where the digitizer is on the screen... I find the digitizer on the W700 really convenient. I use it mostly for signatures and other brief image editing, rather than full on drawing, but a friend of mine who uses one of those off-brand digitizers you plug into your computer via USB used the digitizer on my W700, and she said she would die to have the laptop just because of it. She drew pretty well on it too.

There's no downsides to the digitizer that I've run into... it fits well into the design, and can't be triggered by accident. If you've used X-series tablets like I have, it can be a bit annoying to get used to. The pen/stylus, like X-series, has a little slot for storage in the actual laptop, so you don't have to worry about losing it.

My W700 has the Core 2 Quad, which equates it in power to early Core i5s. It runs Windows 7 beautifully and plays most of my top-notch games without a stutter, despite the fact it's currently fitted with a Quadro FX 2700M(the lower-end option for W700s.) It'll take a LONG time for the W700 to struggle performance-wise, and even then, the digitizer will still make it worth using. Which only means in terms of hardware, you'll be just fine with a W701. And if you're worried at all, you can track down a 2.0GHz i7, the fastest model.

My W700(digitizer, Core 2 Quad, Quadro FX 2700M) would probably sell easily for $800. A W701 with a 3800M, digitizer, and 2.0GHz Extreme i7 would be going on for $1500-$2000 I imagine. If you post a WTB, I'd keep a sharp eye on it... I dunno if you'd have any immediate interest.

[ThinkerTinker]

Thanks for the info. I will take any and all suggestions
I am leaning toward the w701 for the better hardware. This is likely a computer that I would never sell. And the 3800m is still on the older G92 chipset build, but still offers the i7. It would be nice to get the 940xm. But I can't afford much above the $1200 mark. I think I will post a WTB

If anyone else has anymore info to offer I am all ears.

[Medessec]

If your budget is that low-indeed, I would post a WTB right now. You can just put it out there that you want one.

[ThinkerTinker]

Yeah, I already put up a listing. Unfortunately budgets are what they are.
There is a little bit of room, but I have always been able to find what I want, in the condition I want, for the price I want, even if what I want needs to change a little. In short, you find it eventually, even if it means tweaking the exact criteria. Although I will say that the digitizer is important at this point. Otherwise it would just be better/cheaper to go for the M6500 and find one that works.

[amx]

A bit late to the thread, but I wanted to weigh in.

I paid $1000 shipped for my w701 about 5 months ago and felt that I got a screaming deal. A budget of $1200 should be sufficient to land one with the specs you want as long as you're patient. I took a chance on an ebay listing that wasn't very well-written and I think it scared a lot of other bidders off as the other comparably-specced machines were going for about $1200 at the time. My specs are: 720QM, 16GB, 2x500GB 7200rpm, FX 2800M, WXGA+, digitiser/pantone colour sensor.

The digitiser is amazing, to the extent that if my w701 ever dies, I'm going to have a really hard time going back to a laptop that doesn't have one built in. I bought mine specifically for sketching and graphics work. I have a convertible tablet pc as well, but I'd rather draw on the w701 despite the smaller tablet area. The size of the digitiser is the only real caveat for me, since it does take some getting used to (but no more than, say, a Wacom bamboo). It's difficult to make long, smooth strokes that extend across the canvas, so I find myself zooming in and out quite a bit. This is much less of an issue if you're not drawing though.

One thing I don't like is that the digitiser surface gets marked up pretty easily, especially if you use the factory Lenovo pen. I have an aftermarket pen made by Axiotron that looks similar to the Wacom Intuos/Cintiq stylus; it has a much softer tip than the Lenovo and doesn't scratch the digitiser nearly as much. I don't have a particularly heavy hand, so it annoys me to see the ghostly outline of whatever I've been drawing imprinted on the digitiser pad. Another minor niggle is I'll often reach for the touchpad and hit the digitiser instead. Apparently they look identical out of the corner of my eye.

A couple tips/things I wish I'd done differently:
- Get the WUXGA screen -- 1440x900 is just too small on a 17" notebook, especially if you ever want to open up two documents side by side. The WXGA+ isn't a terrible display as far as quality goes, but the extra screen real estate is a virtual necessity. I'm pretty handy, so I figured I would just upgrade the screen later -- no. You need a new LCD and a new cable, and the cable alone is about $70. It would have been cheaper to hold out for the WUXGA.

- If you can, get one that comes with the factory install disks, or at least has the factory Windows image preinstalled. Mine came with both drives wiped, so I did a clean Windows install, and it was kind of a pain to hunt down all of the Lenovo drivers afterward. Also, I have never been able to get the built-in color calibrator to work correctly. I think it requires some power settings that are different from the Windows defaults, and I haven't been able to figure them out yet. Definitely something to keep in mind if the color sensor is important to you.

- In case you ever want to carry this behemoth around, one thing to keep in mind is that it doesn't fit into most 17" laptop bags. Personally, mine never leaves my desk so I don't really care, but it was still a bit of an eye-opener the first time I tried to stuff it into my 17" laptop backpack and the w701 stuck out the top by a full inch.

Aside from that, I love this machine and would buy another in a heartbeat. Good luck with your search -- take your time and don't compromise on the features you want, and I don't think you'll be disappointed.

[ThinkerTinker]

Thanks for the input. Definitely looking to get the higher resolution screen.
As far as a bag I think the one I have will fit. It is what I used to carry around the Monstrous M1730 that has this machine beat by about 2 lbs
As I won't be using the digitizer primarily for drawing, maybe the occasional edit and small foot notes, the small size shouldn't be a problem.
About how big is it? 5 x 3?

[ThinkerTinker]

Well, I updated the posting because I managed to pick one up. It has the digitizer and the pantone sensor, which was a bonus that was not indicated when I purchased it.
Overall it is very clean and in excellent shape. The keyboard flexes a little more than I expected, and time will tell if my feeling that some of the keys are worn is true or not.
Digitizer is hardly scuffed at all except for a small scratch that doesn't look pen related.
It didn't come with the digitizer pen, so I ordered one off of ebay.

It only has the 820m and the 2800m, so I am hoping to get that upgraded, I already have a computer on the way that I can swap 820 out for a 940 and then probably sell the computer for what I paid for it. Anyone selling a Lenovo 3800m cheap? Does anyone know of any others that will work?

It came with a DVD which I will probably try to upgrade to a Blu ray. Does that have to be a Lenovo product?

Couple of tech questions.
I reloaded Windows, did all the updates, including the Lenovo updates.

How do I use the digitizer? Is there a program or virtual "on" switch?

The trackpad seems to be doing something a little odd. Sometimes when moving the cursor around, it will all of a sudden start drifting off in the original direction of travel all by itself. Is there something I can do to fix that?

Also, whenever user account control pops up, the cursor movement is disabled momentarily, and then again after you clear the notification. Can that be turned off?

[Medessec]

Excellent info, and hope you got a good deal. It sounds like you did. ONLY an 820M? That's still a pretty potent i7, that'll get you in A to B in... well, now. W70* uses the same keyboard as the T61 and other Thinkpads around it's time, so it'll be easy to get another one if you need to.

3800Ms specifically for W701 will be a bit difficult to come across, make sure you're getting the right one. Also-the MXM-spec card that goes in the W701 is the same as a lot of modern performance laptops, so a huge variety of cards SHOULD fit, ranging from the GTX 560M you'd find in my Toshiba, to the Radeon 6870Ms in Alienware laptops. I don't have a W701 to see if this works, however. A 2800M, again, will be very sufficient for anything, even gaming, as it's basically a GeForce 9800M on steroids. So if you have a shoestring budget like I do, you can leave it as a low-priority detail in upgrading.

The digitizer, provided the driver is installed(you don't need Wacom software or Photoshop or anything, JUST the driver) will respond perfectly fine to any genuine Lenovo stylus for X-series Tablets and W-series with digitizers, the black ones with with the gray eraser buttons, gray "right-click" buttons on the side and the red tips. Other off-brand styluses may respond, but they will not work properly or as smoothly, most of the time they'll be unusable.

For the Blu-Ray drive, it can be any Serial Ultrabay Enhanced Blu-Ray drive. They are still rather pricey, because... well, they are Blu-Ray.

As for the trackpad, that might be an auto-function or some issue with the synaptics driver. Check the settings(if you installed the Synaptics control panel) and if you can't figure it out, reinstall everything related to the Trackpad.

[ThinkerTinker]

Thanks, it was a pretty good deal.

The processor isn't bad, but with this first generation they found out pretty quickly that brute processing power is les effective at lower clock speeds, especially since many applications could not take advantage of them, like the occasional game.
Processors have progressed amazingly.
The 3720qm of today is > than the previous 2960xm, and the 3630qm is barely below that. An entry level competing with an extreme just in the next generation at stock speeds.

Since the unit I am replacing is the M1730, with dual 9800m GTX's the 2800m doesn't come close to what they can do. Alone even the 3800m is slightly below them, but only in applications where the SLI can be utilized. My hope is that I can get one reasonably and then sell the 2800m to make the up most of the cost.

Do I need to activate something in order to use the pen in office?

[Medessec]

You seem to have doubled the text in your post.

But I do agree with the processor. That's why I like the Core 2 Quad W700s, because 2.0GHz is still a pretty high clock for single-core applications, and you have the ability to do some serious multi-core processing.

The 9800M GTX is a pretty nice card, using it in SLI's only going to make it that much better. The 2800M is substantially better than a 9800M, because the Quadros usually have double the memory and in most applications, even games, they serve some advantages(for example, Quadros can handle Anti-aliasing in some games a lot better than GeForces can). The 3800M isn't much better, because the 3800M's GeForce equivalent is the 280M GTX, and moving up a generation usually won't yield much differences in performance.

As long as the driver for the digitizer is correctly installed, and the cables and connectors for the palmrest are all correctly secured, just hover over the digitizer with the pen and it will respond, moving the mouse around the desktop. Tapping the digitizer with the pen clicks, just like on the X-series tablets.

[ThinkerTinker]

Yeah I fixed that,
Not sure how that happened.

Thanks for the info on the pen.

I have found that the 2800m is somewhere between the 9800m GT and the 9800m GTX. As you say certain things it does better than the gaming cards.
I actually found SLI a little lacking, since most of the applications that I ran (being older ones and why I went with this generation of tech) could not really take advantage of them, and stutter was pretty bad at times. I found myself mostly running a single card overclocked
The 3800m should actually be clocked even higher than the 285m, and the equivalent of a 9800 GTX desktop card with lower memory speed, or about on par with the 9800m GT which has lower clock but with higher ram speeds.

Looking forward to really taking this thing for a test ride when I can. First things are swapping the keyboard and touch pad (they do feel slightly worn) and figuring out what to do with the SSD that came with it. It might end up going into another computer.

It is big, it is actually slightly longer than the M1730, though thinner and less wide. I feel like I can hide behind the thing in class. When I brought it out the first time I got the strangest looks!

[ajkula66]

It only has the 820m and the 2800m, so I am hoping to get that upgraded, I already have a computer on the way that I can swap 820 out for a 940 and then probably sell the computer for what I paid for it. Anyone selling a Lenovo 3800m cheap? Does anyone know of any others that will work?

First of all, let me congratulate you on the purchase of this beast. I hold people who know what they want and are sticking to their guns in high respect. Good for you.

Secondly, while this thread is related to W700 and 3700 GPU, you'll get some flavour of what upgrading/replacing the GPU with a non-Lenovo one is from there:

http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/W-Series-Th ... 147#M37603

Good luck and enjoy!

[ThinkerTinker]

Thanks, yeah that is kind of the way I have always been. I find out exactly what I want, and then go after it with a fixed price in mind.
I do a lot of buying and selling to make a little extra cash on the side to help pay for expenses and such. Free or less expensive upgrades I like as well. Every little bit helps

[ThinkerTinker]

I have been looking up keyboards and touch pads. Is the touch pad also the same as was used in the t60?

A lot are in China, which I don't mind buying from if they are actually OEM and not copies. Given that Lenovo is a Chinese company, I would imagine that they would be fine.

[ThinkerTinker]

Can the w701 take advantage of the SATA 3.0 speeds, or is it limited to SATA 2 in SSD's?

Right now it has a SATA 3.0 drive in it, but I was thinking of swapping that out to another unit and getting a smaller SATA 2 SSD for the w701.
Any recommendations on good, reliable, and not too expensive SATA 2 drives?

[Medessec]

I think the W700's HD deck is SATA 2, both bays.

Don't spare any money on the SSDs, all the cheaper ones are either unreliable/not fast. Go big or go home with the SSDs. Other than that, a great WDC or Seagate 750GB or bigger should do your fine. I'm not big on what drive you should get precisely.

The touchpad, I think only fits W70* only. I think they're made with the palmrest.

[ThinkerTinker]

Is there any way to calibrate the digitizer pad?

It seems to be somewhat off particularly near the edges.

[Medessec]

There should be... I remember being able to do it on my X60T. You may need special Wacom software on the W70* though. Not sure

[ThinkerTinker]

Okay, I will have to look into it.

Do you notice your w700 to be "loose?"

When comparing it to my other units, the keyboard seems to have a lot of flex or looseness that rattles a lot. Not that it is bad, but if you were to take your finger and tap around the keyboard area and surrounding panels, it makes a lot of noise. When I type in the class room it is audibly distinguishable for at least 4 rows.
The entire build just seems to be a bit less rock solid than I expected of a Lenovo thinkpad.
In comparison the M6500 seems to have it beat in terms of build finish, (without taking into account Lenovo's structural superiority)
I like it, I just wish it was 'tighter'

It also beats the M6500 in size by about an inch in L an W, and by half an inch in thickness and about a pound in weight.

[ThinkerTinker]

Also are the dell and Lenovo docking stations each proprietary? I am thinking of getting a basic one that I can plug a few things into.

[ajkula66]

Also are the dell and Lenovo docking stations each proprietary?

Yes they are. No mix & match...

[ThinkerTinker]

Well I just installed a brand new fx3800m. It took a little bit to disassemble the machine to get to the graphics card, more than I was expecting.
But oddly the performance is not very good, about the same as the 2800m.
In artificial benchmark 3dmark06 this is getting about 12000
Compared to the M6500 which is getting 15,000

In many of the places the performance is only about half of the M6500.

This is rather odd.

EDIT:
It looks like there is a possibility that it is close to normal, and that the CPU is limiting the benchmark.
Still 3000 points between the 820qm and a 940xm seems a bit much. And in some cases the score is even lower than the 2800m...

[ThinkerTinker]

It looks like it might be the card, as I swapped out a 940xm into the computer and the score remained the same.

[ThinkerTinker]

Well I have another 3800m on the way in to test against the one currently in my system. Still looking to see if there is a calibration software for the digitizer, but Wacom had nothing to offer, and I haven't found anything on Lenovo's website.