W701 Reviews - Anybody Have One?

[archer6]

Anyone have a W701 yet?

I'm ready to place an order & looking for feedback.

Thanks!

[xiphmont]

Anyone have a W701 yet?

I'm ready to place an order & looking for feedback.

Thanks!

My order currently says 'Shipping 5/1'. In lenovo-speak that is 'an undertermined amount of time', so....

[Crunch]

Anyone have a W701 yet?

I'm ready to place an order & looking for feedback.

Thanks!

I'm getting one. At long last, the "new" MacBook Pro's came out yesterday, and sure enough, no IPS. In fact, not even a single darn quad-core i7, all in the name of battery life. Whatever. That eliminates a MBP for me. I'm kinda glad actually. OS X works very well on my T60p, and it worked even better on my former W700, so if that's one of the main reasons for buying an overpriced piece of aluminum where you can't even swap out the battery...thanks, but no thanks!

As for the HP 8740w 17" WUXGA 16:10 workstation, it's unclear to me as to when, and, perhaps more importantly, as to if these geniuses are ever going to come out with this supposed "next-gen DreamColor" display that was incorrectly purported to include IPS technology. Basterds...

And now that the W701 is finally out, I'm trying to figure out how RGB LED is different from what, "regular" LED? lol...

What configurations are you two interested in?

[arretium]

Estimated ship date of 4/26/2010 here for our W701.

We also ordered a T510 the week prior. The estimated ship date for the T510 was in early May, but it shipped out just this last Monday! So have hope!

[archer6]

Actually I was so busy pouring over the specs in the tabook, so as to not miss anything, that I almost made a huge mistake. (at least as far as my preferences are concerned)

I noticed upon closer inspection, that they _still_ have the tiny TrackPad, with the small mouse buttons for both the TrackPad and the TrackPoint. While I only use the TrackPad once in a while, the problem is the buttons are not along the front edge of the palm rest, but instead they are moved forward towards the keyboard, and in the way of my palms. The 701 is the exact same case as the 700, which is perhaps the reason it's not called the 710. They still use the cheap looking silver buttons for volume and power, as well as the more malleable keyboard of the past years model. This is a true disappointment, now that I have a T510, and W510 with the very nicely styled, much higher quality button controls and stiff keyboard. Also the mouse buttons for the TrackPad and TrackPoint are much larger, with a more functional shape. Now that I've adapted to them it would be very hard to go back to the smaller ones.

That was a close call, as I was just 30 minutes away from pulling the trigger on one of these beasts. In fact, they are now shipping in approx. 9 days, which I confirmed with Lenovo.

So, I guess my quest for a good 17" model, will have to wait for the next product cycle.

Cheers...

[Marin85]

They still use the cheap looking silver buttons for volume and power, as well as the more malleable keyboard of the past years model. This is a true disappointment, now that I have a T510, and W510 with the very nicely styled...

Ha, I like the silver buttons more than the new ones! By this I mean the older ones are the less evil... The new ones are black, but they all look different, no unified look unlike the silver ones, not to mention that the silver ones have better relief, so one cannot miss them in the dark. It is funny that it was one of my concerns that the new W701 would be using the new button design. Now, when you confirmed that it is still the old one, I am very glad about it and also feel kind of relieved

[Crunch]

Actually I was so busy pouring over the specs in the tabook, so as to not miss anything, that I almost made a huge mistake. (at least as far as my preferences are concerned)

I noticed upon closer inspection, that they _still_ have the tiny TrackPad, with the small mouse buttons for both the TrackPad and the TrackPoint. While I only use the TrackPad once in a while, the problem is the buttons are not along the front edge of the palm rest, but instead they are moved forward towards the keyboard, and in the way of my palms. The 701 is the exact same case as the 700, which is perhaps the reason it's not called the 710. They still use the cheap looking silver buttons for volume and power, as well as the more malleable keyboard of the past years model. This is a true disappointment, now that I have a T510, and W510 with the very nicely styled, much higher quality button controls and stiff keyboard. Also the mouse buttons for the TrackPad and TrackPoint are much larger, with a more functional shape. Now that I've adapted to them it would be very hard to go back to the smaller ones.

That was a close call, as I was just 30 minutes away from pulling the trigger on one of these beasts. In fact, they are now shipping in approx. 9 days, which I confirmed with Lenovo.

So, I guess my quest for a good 17" model, will have to wait for the next product cycle.

Cheers...

Interesting observations. The W700 was awesome as far as its sheer power, and umm...yes, even the darn screen lol...WUXGA 16:10 with 2 CCFL lamps and 400nits lol...that's a lot of real estate and plenty bright. The W701 will have the RGB LED screen and the fact that it retains 16:10 makes it a no-brainer for me. As for the trackpad, I didn't really encounter any problems with it, as I virtually never use it. If the one on the W701 gets in the way, you could just disable it.

Anyway, so did you order your W510 yet? I heard that they are having problems getting the FHD screens. I just read that. It's supposed to be a super duper gorgeous panel, so I hope you get it.

[archer6]

Ha, I like the silver buttons more than the new ones! By this I mean the older ones are the less evil... The new ones are black, but they all look different, no unified look unlike the silver ones, not to mention that the silver ones have better relief, so one cannot miss them in the dark. It is funny that it was one of my concerns that the new W701 would be using the new button design. Now, when you confirmed that it is still the old one, I am very glad about it and also feel kind of relieved

How funny it is with our personal preferences, (and I'm laughing at myself) as after your comments I do see your points, they cause me to question if I'm being too picky..ha..ha...

Now I must admit you have me re-thinking this, and I'm glad...

[archer6]

Interesting observations. The W700 was awesome as far as its sheer power, and umm...yes, even the darn screen lol...WUXGA 16:10 with 2 CCFL lamps and 400nits lol...that's a lot of real estate and plenty bright. The W701 will have the RGB LED screen and the fact that it retains 16:10 makes it a no-brainer for me. As for the trackpad, I didn't really encounter any problems with it, as I virtually never use it. If the one on the W701 gets in the way, you could just disable it.

Anyway, so did you order your W510 yet? I heard that they are having problems getting the FHD screens. I just read that. It's supposed to be a super duper gorgeous panel, so I hope you get it.

Actually it's not the TrackPad that's an issue as like you said it can be turned off, it's the forward placement of the buttons for the TrackPad that are rather bothersome. Not a huge problem, but one of those "little things". Moreover it's something that upon further consideration I'm deciding if I will just overlook.

I have my original W510 and it's a beauty, however I didn't get the exact config I wanted at the time so I'm waiting for the display panels to become available, then I will order exactly what I want. The first one is already sold to a friend.

Cheers...

[AMATX]

Something that surprised me is the amount of overlap in cpu power between the W700 and W701.
According to this list: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php one has to go to the i7-920XM, top of the line(for now) W701 cpu to get more total throughput than was available on the W700 QX9300. I realize there's more to throughput than raw cpu mips, but I'd have thought there'd be more upper end on the W701 cpus.

So, tradeoffs, as usual:

* W700, brighter screen, way cheaper.
* W701 16G max memory, vs. 8G max on the W700.
* Video better on W701? Doesn't matter to me; I also don't follow video cards much.
* Bit faster memory/FSB on the W701? Lenovo.com has posted differing configs available, so kind of hard to say how this will settle out in coming weeks.

I'm waiting to see if/when some sort of 6G or 8G memory chips become available and whether they'd work at all in the W700. If so, there'd be some real value left in the W700.

Depending upon one's needs/bottlenecks, it appears to me that the bang for the $$$ sweet spot in all of this is the upper end of the W700 boxes. Lots of horsepower, 8G max memory, fab screen, great pricing...

I just took a quick look/summary of all of this last night; anyone out there have more details/info to offer up? For example, the url/list above seems to indicate that the i7 920XM is tops for now in mobile processors, but how much farther is Intel gonna develop this processor for laptops?

[archer6]

Based soley as a Silicon Valley native, and the associates I have within the industry, the buzz I hear is Intel has just began to rev the Core i series as we discuss this. Many more shall follow, typical advancements will be in thermal dynamics and graphics handling.

Cheers...

[Marin85]

@AMATX:
When W700 was still available on Lenovo website, it had starting price of 2k $. This, however, didn´t include the QX9300. The models with QX9300 are still pricey and come pretty close to W701 configured with i7-820QM. In raw mathematical benchmarks like SuperPi or wPrime the latter is noticeably faster than QX9300, see e.g. notebookcheck. Having said that, QX9300 is not to be underestimated at all. It is still a very powerful mobile cpu as you have seen yourself in cpubenchmark.

Now, having all that in mind, for pretty much the same price W701 comes with some additional features like the RGB-LED screen and USB 3.0, and for that matter, Quadro FX2800M also comes close to Quadro FX3700M in performance (well, ok, that depends on what you are doing). Not to mention upgradeability, which leads me to your other question: by the end of Q3 this year we should be seeing i7-940XM (max clock rate at 3.33 GHz).

So, all in all, unless someone is offering new W700 units with QX9300, WUXGA, calibrator + WACOM, and Quadro FX3700M for like 1800$, I would say that W701 and W700 are comparable in price/performance. In fact, I think W701 beats W700 in long term.

Cheers,

Marin

[archer6]

Posting here on my BlackBerry as I am right now, due to air travel demands, makes it quite difficult to get into the details. However, suffice to say that after owning a W700 and finding it lacking in build quality, display, and other deficiencies, I've heard from rock solid people within Lenovo that the W701 is a fine machine. Hands down I can say with confidence, the overall quality and the ability to upgrade many components, makes the 701 the one to have.

Cheers...

[AMATX]

Good points, Marin85...I neglected to say that I'm not averse to buying used/refurb/return, etc., either off of ebay or through the Lenovo outlet. That widens the potential $$$ gap, as it'll be a while before the W701 is available anywhere other than from Lenovo at new prices.

In my particular case, I don't have to have the latest/greatest, just enough capabilities for what I need, in a fairly recent format, so the W700 will be a contender for a while longer...at least until I run out of memory(8Gig) or mips, or both

[Marin85]

Indeed, Lenovo outlet seems to have some good deals on W700 units, including on or two flagged as new...

You mentioned earlier that you are not so much interested in the gpu specs. But it is worth noting that many cpu-intensive tasks are currently moving towards the GPGPU architectures, including nVidia CUDA. I don´t know what tasks you will be using your system for, but since you want the machine to "be a contender for a while longer...at least until I run out of memory(8Gig) or mips, or both", I think the gpu capabilities of W70x are also something to keep in mind when choosing a suitable configuration.

Just my 0.02$

Marin

[archer6]

Just my 0.02$

Worth so much more...

Your points are well taken and appreciated.

Cheers...

[AMATX]

Indeed, Lenovo outlet seems to have some good deals on W700 units, including on or two flagged as new...

You mentioned earlier that you are not so much interested in the gpu specs. But it is worth noting that many cpu-intensive tasks are currently moving towards the GPGPU architectures, including nVidia CUDA. I don´t know what tasks you will be using your system for, but since you want the machine to "be a contender for a while longer...at least until I run out of memory(8Gig) or mips, or both", I think the gpu capabilities of W70x are also something to keep in mind when choosing a suitable configuration.

Just my 0.02$

Marin

Yes, I thought this was quite interesting, when I came across it recently. However, the apps I use are not likely to be updated to use GPU functions, so unless Microsoft or someone else comes up with a way to make a GPU core look like a virtual CPU, nada for me. Nifty stuff, though..