Lenovo Group Ltd. has announced the release of a ThinkPad laptop that takes the "desktop replacement" category of notebook PCs to a new level.

The ThinkPad W700ds appears to be the first laptop ever to sport two LCD screens -- a 17-in. primary and a 10.6-in. secondary screen. The main screen is rated at 400 nits of brightness, which is brighter than any other notebook in the market, he added. It also has a color gamut equivalent to 72% of Adobe RGB that is better than other notebooks and a plus for photographers and graphic designers. The W700ds secondary 10.6-in. vertical screen is about the size of a typical netbook display, Lenovo said, or about 40% the size of the W700ds primary 17-in. display. It can also be tilted up to 30 degrees like a cars rearview mirror.

"Why two screens? Most people are using two monitors at their desktop. So we wanted to give them all the things they are used to on their desk," said Wes Williams, worldwide product marketing manager for ThinkPads.

The souped-up "mobile workstation," as Lenovo calls it, also comes with customers choice of quad-core Intel Core 2 processors and Nvidia Quadro mobile graphics CPU with as many as 128 cores. It also comes with as much as 8GB of DDR3 memory and a pair of hard drive/solid-state drive bays for up to 960GB of storage. The ThinkPad W700ds laptop from Lenovo weights 11 pounds.

The W700ds is expected to be available in January starting at $3,600.

Source: Computerworld