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As you may have already noticed, I always was a ThinkPad junkie. This year I did a very extensive research, having that Lenovo was one of the last manufacturers to add Core i7-based laptops to their inventory. None of the laptops appealed as a worthy replacement, so as soon as W701 model was up on Lenovo’s site I had it ordered.

The specs aren’t beefed up as much as I would want them to be, but 8GB of RAM (with ability to upgrade to 16GB) and Core i7 were a must. While I was at it, for some reason, I decided to go with 17 inch screen option – which clearly was a mistake. The laptop came out to be extremely bulky and heavy – which sort of defies the whole purpose of having a laptop as a mobile (as in – you will be able to move with it) computer. On a bright side – the system can host 2 hard drives (with option for RAID) and an optical drive, something that had cost me a USB slot before.

The screen option, since I was going with 17 inches, is the WUXGA (1920×1200) RGB-LED-BL with hueyPro color calibrator. Since I do a lot of photography this turned out to be a good idea, having right colors and all. Of course, I did calibrate all my previous screens, but having a combo of a high-quality screen and color calibrator tailored for that specific screen is definitely a better approach.

Next big thing for any laptop is the keyboard. You think having laptops so many years around most manufacturers would have that part figured out, but it’s not the case. Most of them, following Apple’s lead, have attempted to create those “island” keys. They might look good, but hardly useful, especially for people who alternate between different keyboards all the time. Lenovo, while also following the trend with such keyboard on ThinkPad Edge systems, have made yet another improvement to the “real” ThinkPad keyboards. Just as I fell in love with my T42 keyboard and somewhat disliked T60′s, the keyboard on W701 is a step above all. Typing is a pure pleasure I haven’t experienced anywhere else. Since the size of the laptop allows it (it’s a beast) Lenovo has a numeric keypad included as well. Not that I personally has any use for it, but I’m sure I will – now that I have it available.

Perks of the system, aside from 5 USB ports, CompactFlahs and SD card slots, color calibration, web cam, fingerprint reader and both DVI and VGA connectors include small Wacom tablet with Wacom pen (which even has its own storage in the right side of the frame). While ordering I thought of this as of purely waste of money (there is no way to skip it if you order color calibrator option), but surprisingly I had immediately found the pen option very useful. Some of my mail (the one that comes in paper form) was stolen and some bank statements with it. Obviously I had to close the account and move all the automatic payments to new one, which – in some cases – requires sending a voided check with account number. So I scanned the check, voided it by simply writing over it with Wacom pen, signed all the required forms using the same pen and e-mailed everything back within minutes. Once I’ve realized what just happened I thought that such option might have some merit not only for artists, but even for ordinary people like me.

Overall build of the laptop feels bulky, old and excessive. I am used to thin boundaries of the screen, so the W701′s full inch (or more – on the top and bottom) frame around 17″ screen looks ancient. I am sure there are perfectly justifiable technology reasons behind it, like wireless antennas, web cam and so on, but I’m a consumer and I don’t care – I want the frame around my screen to be as thin as possible.

Speaking of bulky – the power supply issue is one of my major points of despair. Lenovo has changed the power connector YET AGAIN! Older power supplies from T60 and X60 series are not compatible – just like they weren’t between T40 and T60. But more to that – the power supply falls a few inches short of the size of my X61s. Yes, it’s that large. Surely, you need a lot of juice to power this laptop, but the power brick the size of another laptop itself – that’s something.

The battery is located underneath the front edge, below the keyboard, and there is no room for a larger battery, like in case of IBM/Lenovo T series. I realize that this is a desktop replacement, not really a portable solution, but it is still a laptop, so some effort should have been made to make larger batteries available. Given that 9 cell can only drive this powerhorse for less than 2 hours, I want more options.

The W line of ThinkPads is a newer addition to the growing inventory of Lenovo laptops. The T series is no longer a top level in terms of performance. Lenovo seem to be bringing the best from A, R and T series into the W line, but there’s definitely a room for improvement. We all used to having limited options for our hardware configurations, but given the size and capabilities of Lenovo’s T and W series, I would expect a lot more options in the next iterations.

The overall experience (I am using W701 for two weeks now) is very positive. Of course, there are couple of drawbacks, but in general I am very happy about the purchase – it provides me with all the features I need to get current and most of the future things done.

In preparation to release of beta of Visual Studio 10 and .Net framework 4 (due out this Tuesday for MSDN and Thursday for general public) I have installed Windows 7 x64 and MS Office 2010 Technical Preview on my Lenovo ThinkPad X61s laptop. It has Core2 Duo L7700 CPU, 3GB RAM and 30GB OCZ SSD hard drive. So far it has been a great mobile workhorse for Windows XP, and since I can’t risk my main workstation’s setup I decided to test the combo on X61s. It still feels a little like living on the edge, even though this isn’t my primary work tool.

First culprit I hit was that Google Chrome wasn’t working under 64-bit Windows 7 version. No matter what I did it was just displaying a blank page. Turns out the issue is already fixed in Developer channel build. For others, adding a –in-process-plugins to a shortcut should do the trick. Alternatively, if other shortcuts are still giving you headaches, here’s the fix I have found (from quite a few sources) to be working:

The registry keys to change:

* HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\chrome.exe\shell\open\command
* HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ChromeHTML\shell\open\command
* HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Applications\chrome.exe\shell\open\command
* HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\ChromeHTML\shell\open\command

Each key needs to be changed from looking like
…\chrome.exe” — “%1″
to
…\chrome.exe”–in-process-plugins — “%1″

Next stop – Lenovo’s Vista drivers don’t always work for Windows 7, despite Microsoft’s assurances that whatever works in Vista will work in Win7. As of right now the two biggest problems that remain are the power gauge (still shows about an hour of charge right before going to hibernation) and trackpoint driver, that only works in classic Windows applications. Even though the trackpoint works in Firefox, both Safari and Chrome ignore the scrolling feature making the ThinkPad’s trackpoint effectively useless.

Windows XP virtual machine worked fine, although Windows 7 only allocates 256MB of memory for it, which is nearly not enough. Pitching it up to 1024MB made it work just right, although increases the VM’s startup time, if only by half a minute.

Another thing that came as a surprise (since I haven’t used Vista heavily) was that telnet application is missing. For some reason you have to go to Control Panel ->Programs and Features -> Turn Windows Features On and Off and pick Telnet (as well as old trivial FTP, while you’re at it) to get installed. Thankfully, you won’t need an installation DVD for that.

Also, you will have to adjust the CPU’s power settings to make sure your applications as well as virtual environment aren’t bogged down by them. For some unknown reason Win7 sets something around 5% CPU power for laptop running on battery. Therefore – anytime you plan on watching those YouTube videos on the couch the performance would be so low that you will be pushed to fetch that power cord. Alternatively – drum up CPU power in advanced power settings.

Since power setting in Windows 7 are a bit more granular than those you had before, you will have more control over how fast your battery is depleting. Given that, your mileage may and will vary, although I’ve noticed that under WinXP the same battery lasted about an hour longer. My perception is that this is mainly due to me being more active (since I install and tweak stuff heavily rather than use the laptop for average browsing or writing stuff) and that I tend to run screen brighter in Win7 than I did in XP.

One of the parts of Office 2010 that I was mainly interested in is Outlook. So far this is the most valuable tool in the whole suite, since I don’t use Excel macros heavily. I do, however, track a lot of things in Outlook, keep contact information and their history, e-mails, tasks and notes. Additionally, contacts, tasks and notes are easily synchronize with heavily customized Windows Mobile phone that I use. However, much to my disappointment, the only major change in Outlook was the ribbon menu that became even less intuitive and more cryptic. Since this is a Technology Preview version I can’t complain about all the images and icons that are missing, but overall I was definitely struggling to complete tasks I got used to doing in Office 2007. Since I’ve only spent about half a day tweaking things around, I guess I will have to make a separate post about other parts of the Office 2010. So far the IMAP accounts work fine, although I missed the new setting Outlook uses for SMTP server (it’s 587 now). Luckily I noticed it early enough to tweak my server to run exim on port 587. Also, csd+lfd had to be told that it’s okay if someone tries to use this port for inbound connection (outbound was already there). But these are minor nuissances that you only get to encounter once. Oh, and for those of us who were hoping – no, you can’t export e-mail account settings (including username and password) from Outlook 2010. Not in this version anyway.

Subjectively, Win7 x64 “feels” a little more sluggish on this setup that Win7 x86 felt on the same laptop with 120GB WD Scorpio on 5400 RPM. There’s a noticeable “drag” on things, but as I’ve said – this is just my subjective impression. Now I’m just going to wait couple of more days for betas of Visual Studio 10 and .Net 4.0 to see how things will work then.

There are couple of gadgets that I possess that make great conversation pieces. One is Lenovo X61p laptop, which I reviewed earlier, another one is famous HTC Advantage 7501. Both, as it turns out, attract a lot of curiosity.

When I am working (or blogging) at the local Starbucks with my X61 a lot of people pay attention to the small yet strong laptop figure. Most of people I see around me use large, bulky, flashy laptop, like Dell, Toshiba or Apple, with 15 and 17 inch screens. X61p that I own has only 12.1 inches and resolution of 1024×768. However, it doesn’t look like cheap plastic hardware, more like a business tool for a person on the go. It also attracts looks because it’s different from other laptops around, so it naturally stands out. And any conversation it starts can be turned into potential sales pitch. After all – it isn’t hard to predict the sequence: “Nice laptop you got there! – Thank you, I travel a lot, so I have to have as light load as possible. – Oh, wow, what do you do? – Web design, we create web sites. Our customers are all over US, so I get to travel a lot sometimes.” – and so on.

The HTC Advantage (follow this link if you want to see where I bought it and don’t fall for any price above a grand) is very unique. It doesn’t look like Amazon’s Kindle (another great conversation piece, actually), but I do read books on a subway using HTC Advantage, so people become naturally interested. Again, the sequence is very much the same. Although last time I got asked, the lady pulled out her Blackberry and started researching Amazon for HTC Advantage right there and then.

Generally speaking there is a lot of stereotype bashing going on right here. Being equipped with so many advanced gadgets makes me look like a geek. On the other hand, these gadgets help me make more contacts with people I would otherwise miss. Not a geeky behavior at all.