Notes from my quick review of a W700
Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2009 4:10 pm
I ordered a W700ds, but was shipped a W700 by mistake. Before returning it, I gave it a once-over and noted the following:
1. The W700 is lighter than I expected. Build quality seems excellent, but no better than my T6x/T4x machines. Even with its bulk, I can pick it up by the front right corner without the unit flexing. You can't pick it up by the front left corner because the (empty) expresscard slots start to collapse.
2. The expresscard slots are side-by-side, which is a good move. On the T6x machines, the slots are top/bottom which prevents putting many cards in simultaneously because the donlge of the bottom card blocks the card above.
3. The W700 still has a dial-up telephone jack. This surprised me.
4. There are 5 USB ports on the W700 (two top/bottom on the left, three in a triangle layout on the right, all USB plugs are horizontal). But they are too close together. For example, if I put a Corsair thumb drive on either side, it partially blocks access to the neighboring ports. There is no way to put two bulky thumbdrives on the same side.
5. There is a blank area over the numeric keypad that looks strange and out-of-place.
6. There is some flex on the left side of the keyboard. Overall keyboard quality is very good. The keyboard appears to be a new design. If you lift up a key and peek underneath, you see both blue pads ala NMB keyboards, together with a top-right to bottom-left springs ala ALPS (see my earlier thread here.)
7. Both the space key and the upper-right mouse button make an annoying clunking noise. It really started to bother me after a short time using the keyboard.
8. The presence of the numeric keypad forces the keyboard to the left, which leaves me feeling off-center using the system. This is probably true for all notebooks with numeric keypads, but I'm guessing that the the secondary screen of the W700ds being on the right would make the problem even worse. The secondary screen should probably be on the left to make the system feel more balanced.
9. The W700's Ultrabay is a new design. Previous ultrabay devices will not fit in the W700, including those from the T4x/T6x line. The new bay is taller (as tall as the UltraBay 2000). I couldn't put an ultrabay device from any previous Thinkpad into the W700, because the W700 slimbay devices have a metal tab that depresses a post within the slim bay. This post is not depressed by earlier Ultrabay devices, so they won't go all the way in. The W700's DVD/CD drive has SATA power and data jacks. Peeking inside the W700's empty Ultrabay opening, I can see the only connections are for SATA power and data.
10. The microphone has been moved to the area just below the display and to the left of the green LCD's. This was a good move as it gets it away from the disk drive(s) which added some noise to the microphone.
11. Screen quality is very good. Not as good as Flexview, but almost. Side viewing angles are decent. The only viewing angle that washes out is tilting the top of the display away from you. The display has a larger "sweet spot" than I expected after reading other reviews.
12. I tested the DVI on one of my 30" Gateway XHD3000 displays. The DVI drove it as full resolution of 2560x1600 with no problems.
13. I tested the VGA on another 30" Gateway - and could not get past 1920x1200 resolution because the Gateway 30" maxes out at 1920x1280 on VGA.
14. I drove both the DVI (2560x1600) and the VGA (1920x1200) simultaneously with no problems, but just as expected when you drive two external displays the W700's built-in display goes dark.
1. The W700 is lighter than I expected. Build quality seems excellent, but no better than my T6x/T4x machines. Even with its bulk, I can pick it up by the front right corner without the unit flexing. You can't pick it up by the front left corner because the (empty) expresscard slots start to collapse.
2. The expresscard slots are side-by-side, which is a good move. On the T6x machines, the slots are top/bottom which prevents putting many cards in simultaneously because the donlge of the bottom card blocks the card above.
3. The W700 still has a dial-up telephone jack. This surprised me.
4. There are 5 USB ports on the W700 (two top/bottom on the left, three in a triangle layout on the right, all USB plugs are horizontal). But they are too close together. For example, if I put a Corsair thumb drive on either side, it partially blocks access to the neighboring ports. There is no way to put two bulky thumbdrives on the same side.
5. There is a blank area over the numeric keypad that looks strange and out-of-place.
6. There is some flex on the left side of the keyboard. Overall keyboard quality is very good. The keyboard appears to be a new design. If you lift up a key and peek underneath, you see both blue pads ala NMB keyboards, together with a top-right to bottom-left springs ala ALPS (see my earlier thread here.)
7. Both the space key and the upper-right mouse button make an annoying clunking noise. It really started to bother me after a short time using the keyboard.
8. The presence of the numeric keypad forces the keyboard to the left, which leaves me feeling off-center using the system. This is probably true for all notebooks with numeric keypads, but I'm guessing that the the secondary screen of the W700ds being on the right would make the problem even worse. The secondary screen should probably be on the left to make the system feel more balanced.
9. The W700's Ultrabay is a new design. Previous ultrabay devices will not fit in the W700, including those from the T4x/T6x line. The new bay is taller (as tall as the UltraBay 2000). I couldn't put an ultrabay device from any previous Thinkpad into the W700, because the W700 slimbay devices have a metal tab that depresses a post within the slim bay. This post is not depressed by earlier Ultrabay devices, so they won't go all the way in. The W700's DVD/CD drive has SATA power and data jacks. Peeking inside the W700's empty Ultrabay opening, I can see the only connections are for SATA power and data.
10. The microphone has been moved to the area just below the display and to the left of the green LCD's. This was a good move as it gets it away from the disk drive(s) which added some noise to the microphone.
11. Screen quality is very good. Not as good as Flexview, but almost. Side viewing angles are decent. The only viewing angle that washes out is tilting the top of the display away from you. The display has a larger "sweet spot" than I expected after reading other reviews.
12. I tested the DVI on one of my 30" Gateway XHD3000 displays. The DVI drove it as full resolution of 2560x1600 with no problems.
13. I tested the VGA on another 30" Gateway - and could not get past 1920x1200 resolution because the Gateway 30" maxes out at 1920x1280 on VGA.
14. I drove both the DVI (2560x1600) and the VGA (1920x1200) simultaneously with no problems, but just as expected when you drive two external displays the W700's built-in display goes dark.
Also, what you mention about the screen, is interesting. I´m a bit of surprised that they really managed to put some good TN screen. Maybe with the next model we can expect something even better