Lenovo has launched the latest and most power packed graphics notebook this August – go to DPReview.com for all the details. What is notable is that this machine acknowledges that graphics processing is now driving PC development.
Look at all the graphics goodies – 17″ Hi-resolution, high gamut WUXA screen, NVidia 3700 with 1GB of memory, Intel Quad Core processor, DVI-link with 8GB of memory, two 200GB 7200RPM RAID capable disk drives, built-in color calibration unit and 6×4″ Wacom Digitizing tablet among others. Now admittedly many of these features are computer-game inspired – but not the disk drives, color calibration and digitizing tablet. These are pure graphic designer features. Graphics demand much from PC’s and the suppliers are responding.
But the unit weighs a ton – 3.3kg weight; and costs a ton $3300. And both are just starting values as this unit has close to a dozen optional features. However, even given these optional features , I would like to raise three serious game changing problems.
First, the disk drives are undersized and not maximum speed. Flash-based memory or SSD-Solid State Disk drives offer just as much disk space, and soon, even more at much faster speeds. Second, the Wacom digitizing tablet should be a Wacom digitizing screen like the Cintiq so that graphic artists can do touch screen operations directly on the images or deigns they are working with. Third, the operating system is Vista – the weakest link in this package. Not just that Vista’s Media Center PC is tinkertoy media software but Vista itself stands in the way of making this a great machine. There is still no full screen point-and-shoot nor any multi-touch features which the iPhone and Microsoft Surfaces has proved to be very powerful productivity boosts.
So the Lenovo is good news in that it starts to cater to a market that is driving PC capabilities, performance and features. However, photograhers and video producers may want to wait until some of the inevitable hardware kinks get wringed out and the features are improved.