While many people are still struggling to find the desk space (and money) for a dual-monitor setup, according to Fujitsu and the Fraunhofer IAO laboratory we should actually be squeezing three displays into our workspace if we want real performance improvements. Compared to users completing tasks on a single 19-inch LCD, those with three such screens linked together saw a 35.5-percent jump in efficiency.
Lenovo’s ThinkPad W700ds may have been around for a few weeks, but CES has been the first opportunity we at SlashGear have had to play with the dual-display behemoth. Based on Lenovo’s original W700, complete with a Wacom graphics digitizer integrated into the palm rest, the W700ds adds a pull-out 10.6-inch LCD display that slides from the main 17-inch panel. It’s an interesting concept, but our hands-on impressions leave us wondering if the compromises are worth it.
We kicked off the week with a review of HP’s MediaSmart EX487 Home Server, but after that brief dalliance with Microsoft it was Apple that caught most of the headlines. Much of it is rumor, of course, about what will launch at Macworld next week – A new unibody 17-inch MacBook Pro with integrated battery? A new Mac mini? An iPod touch HD tablet? – but the Dev Team gave us something more concrete with the release of yellowsn0w. If you’ve been waiting to unlock your iPhone 3G, now’s your chance.
The groundbreaking dual-screen Lenovo ThinkPad W700ds is no doubt a creative and one-of-the-kind laptop replacement we’ve seen to date. Sized at 10.6-inch, the slide-out secondary screen is essentially a 2nd notebook built-in, and so does the weight and price. With retail tips over $4000, interested buyer might want to check out a few reviews before shelling out the hard dollars. Folks over at laptormag have jumped at the opportunity to get their hands on the ThinkPad, the full review is up, not wowed but managed to came away with the Editor Choice.
It’s the final Week in Review of 2008, and unsurprisingly it’s been a relatively quiet week what with the holiday festivities taking priority. Hopefully you’ve not spent your entire shopping budget on gifts, however, as there are still quite a few interesting gadgets on the horizon. Notebooks small and large again seized the headlines, with various Sony websites dripping out news regarding the company’s upcoming VAIO netbook. First a January 9th announcement was promised, then the netbook form-factor confirmed, and finally we’ve got spec details. At the other end of the scale, more details of Lenovo’s ThinkPad W700ds appeared, while the mobile workstation itself showed up in photos and on video.
Buried in eWeek’s article about the Lenovo ThinkPad W700ds there’s a photo gallery of live shots of the dual-display mobile workstation. You’ve seen the screen in pop-out action; now ignore the glossy press shots and check out a whole 10.6-inch sub-screen packed full of Photoshop tools.
More shots of the Lenovo ThinkPad W700ds after the cut
While I know Lenovo’s ThinkPad W700ds dual-screen workstation would likely break my weak blogger’s back should I actually try to lift it, that still doesn’t end its appeal. A video of one of Lenovo’s prototypes has shown up, showing the mechanism by which the second, 10.6-inch LCD display slides out and then back into the W700ds’ lid, behind the primary 17-inch display.
Check out the video after the cut
When news of Lenovo’s ThinkPad W700ds dual-display workstation broke last week we did wonder if the small photo was a fan mockup – the side display looked very much “tagged on”. Now new, larger official images have appeared, and it looks like that original picture was accurate. Happily we also have a new price range, which is much less than what early tips suggested: Lenovo will be selling the W700ds from around $3,600.
Review of the week was ASUS’ Eee Top ET1602 touchscreen nettop, which proved itself quite capable of taking on any doubts over an Atom-based PC and throwing them out. It’s certainly left us excited about next-year’s models, which are meant to have bigger displays and improved media capabilities. Meanwhile we’re still playing with Nokia’s 5800 XpressMusic Tube; check out our first impressions.
Details of a Lenovo laptop with integrated dual displays have emerged. The W700ds has both the 17-inch CCFL-backlit 1920 x 1200 display from the W700 but adds a second, 10.6-inch LED-backlit 768 x 1280 panel in portrait orientation. Lenovo are billing this as a productivity booster, with an extra 39-percent of space on offer. As with the original W700, the w700ds has an onboard 128 x 80 cm palmrest digitizer, optional RAID and up to an Intel Core 2 Quad Core Extreme QX9300 2.53GHz processor with 12MB of L2 cache.
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