W701 still worth it?

[excal32]

I'm curious if the W701 is a thinkpad still worth buying. They seem to be fairly rare and used prices are all over the place - i'm looking for a plain one not a 701ds - but not sure if the older quad core i7's are worth it? they don't even have usb 3.0 so not sure if they're still worth spending several hundred on.

[brchan]

The WUXGA RGB-LED lit screens on these machines are excellent. In terms of performance they are still very capable machines, especially with the FX 3800M gpu and i7 920xm.

Another part of owning a W700/1 is its uniqueness in sheer size and the features Lenovo was able to put into such a large laptop.

[ajkula66]

The WUXGA RGB-LED lit screens on these machines are excellent.

Nice they are. Excellent...read on..

In terms of performance they are still very capable machines, especially with the FX 3800M gpu and i7 920xm.

Agreed.

Another part of owning a W700/1 is its uniqueness in sheer size and the features Lenovo was able to put into such a large laptop.

Personally, if I wanted to own a 17" behemoth from that era it would be HP 8740W with DC panel. Now that is an excellent screen, arguably the best one ever to be seen on any laptop. These also had a wider/better choice of GPUs. The downside? Keyboard is meh. And I'm being kind here.

[excal32]

The WUXGA RGB-LED lit screens on these machines are excellent.

Nice they are. Excellent...read on..

In terms of performance they are still very capable machines, especially with the FX 3800M gpu and i7 920xm.

Agreed.

Another part of owning a W700/1 is its uniqueness in sheer size and the features Lenovo was able to put into such a large laptop.

Personally, if I wanted to own a 17" behemoth from that era it would be HP 8740W with DC panel. Now that is an excellent screen, arguably the best one ever to be seen on any laptop. These also had a wider/better choice of GPUs. The downside? Keyboard is meh. And I'm being kind here.

Wow, that HP is really so much cheaper. I will have to seriously consider it!

For the value I might put up with the keyboard - I am planning for it to replace my t420 as a "primarily plugged in" laptop so an external keyboard would not be out of the question...

[ajkula66]

Wow, that HP is really so much cheaper. I will have to seriously consider it!

BEWARE!

Not all of 8740W units - but only a select few - sport the DC panel. One sold on this very forum less than a month ago, within a couple of hours of being posted.

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 34#p787234

You're looking at $1K for a decent DC-equipped example.

[triturbo]

Personally, if I wanted to own a 17" behemoth from that era it would be HP 8740W with DC panel. Now that is an excellent screen, arguably the best one ever to be seen on any laptop. These also had a wider/better choice of GPUs. The downside? Keyboard is meh. And I'm being kind here.

I second that. I find the keyboard pretty good (at least for my taste), but haven't been spoiled by a ThinkPad one either.

[danikayser84]

I recently bought one (got an excellent deal on one) to use as a desktop, and I like the fact that you can run 3 hard drives and 32GB of RAM on it (I currently have 12 but will bring it to 32 soon)... but undecided as to whether I want Blu-ray or a third hard drive (I use a 480GB SanDisk SSD and 2TB Seagate HDD in mine)

Also, the W701 does have a single USB 3.0 port on the left size (above the eSATA port)

[Saucey]

Tough to say, if you want a laptop with a digitizer, than the W701 would be the way to go. However it is limited with its GPU and a price premium.
The 8740W and M4800 have a lot of graphic card upgrades and mods.

[MisterB]

I wouldn't mind replacing my W700 with a W701. Faster and more memory. Most of the ones I've seen for sale are way overpriced and I'm not motivated enough to seriously look for one but if one came my way at the right price, I'd buy it in a second. I'm not all that interested in the ds models, I just need the WUXGA display and digitizer. Definitely worth it if the price is reasonable.

[rijhsing]

I just listed this today:
http://www.forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopi ... 1&t=122555

I wouldn't mind replacing my W700 with a W701. Faster and more memory. Most of the ones I've seen for sale are way overpriced and I'm not motivated enough to seriously look for one but if one came my way at the right price, I'd buy it in a second. I'm not all that interested in the ds models, I just need the WUXGA display and digitizer. Definitely worth it if the price is reasonable.