Camera Labs

http://www.engadget.com/2008/08/12/lenovo-intros-the-monstrous-thinkpad-w700-and-we-get-our-hands/

Quad core, Quadro FX 3700, dual HDs with RAID, calibration utilities and a built in Wacom digitiser.

Sounds great for photographers!

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Graham
Flickr

It sounds heavy, and expansive!! I think hardcore gamers need quad core much more than photographers do.

IMO, the best ThinkPads ever made would still be those T60p's with the legendary Flexview (IPS) display, which was discontinued by lenovo in 2006.

For those who don't know it:





IPS screen (left) compared to TN screen (right). Most laptops use TN screens nowadays because they are cheap. High end desktop monitors use S-PVA, IPS, S-IPS panels etc..

T60p's come with the ATI FireGL V5200 as graphic card (basically an X1600 in old MBPs), and the fastest processor a T60 can take is the Intel T7600 @2.33Ghz, which is more than enough for usual photographic applications.

Sorry grahamnp for making this thread a little OT. The W700 is surely a powerful machine, but I'll never forgive lenovo for ruining the best parts of a ThinkPad: first the display and now the keyboard

I've used nothing but ThinkPads in my life but my next laptop will likely to be an Alienware or a MBP.

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GALLERY

As a gamer myself ill just mention that quad core is much more for photography, video editing and anything that requires rendering like Maya, which is a really cool program. If your into gaming you get a really good video card and some fast ram, not quad cores...

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Nikon D60 | AF-S 18-200mm VR f/3.5-5.6 | ML-L3 Wireless Release | Slik Sprint Pro Tripod | Lowepro Topload Zoom 2

No problems chickenflaboured chips!

I've never owned a Thinkpad but it's a bit disappointing to see them detract from the original Thinkpad's image with models like the SL300. Having said that, they've gotta make some changes to continue to keep up with the times.

Quad-core has lots of uses for photography as more and more creative applications are being optimised for multi-core processors, PS is one example.

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Graham
Flickr

Hi grahamnp and Tridawgn,

I didn't know some CPU demanding applications like maya.. I only said so based on some experience I had:

My main rig is a three-year-old ThinkPad T43 with Pentium 780 @2.26ghz, ATI X300 64MB, 2GB DDR2 RAM and 100GB 7200RPM HDD. It handles CS3 Photoshop or Lightroom 2 just fine (actually very fast with LR2 I would say), and those are recent photographic applications. As for games, I was unable to play Doom 3 stably a couple of years ago as every time my T43 burned up to 100C and shut itself down after less than 20 minutes, and Doom 3 is an old game. Some recent games can't even pass the installation due to the lame configurations (graphic card mainly, but some games do demand a Duo Core processor)

I always believe the PC game is the key that evolves the whole PC industry. If I were still a gamer, my T43 would've probably already died of some unexpected accident. (I get kinda violent when playing games with unacceptable speed)

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GALLERY