Users react to Lenovo's dual-screen laptop: "A thing of beauty" or "ugly as sin"?

Lincoln Spector — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 17:38:00 -0500

Lenovo’s dual-screen ThinkPad W700ds laptop is generating a lot of on-screen chatter. Users who like two-screen computing at work and miss it on the road consider the W700ds an ingenious solution. But others find it to be an ugly, overweight monstrosity.

"It is a great idea," gushed tad0900, responding to a ZDNet blog post. He identified himself as "a proposal manager who uses dual screens at work" and said having a dual-screen option in a laptop would be very helpful when he worked at home.

On a thread at the Tech Power Up Forums, Kamin Majere described the main, 1920x1200 screen as "great." He said, "it allows more documents to be full sized at a time and still fully viewable, but that extra screen...gives me more real estate to work with."

On the same forum page, "Ripper3" predicted that the W700ds could be "the start of something. Laptops are slowly taking over, and now they have something that fits in nearly any category."

Beneath a Notebook Review.com blog post, CommSoft called the new laptop "a thing of beauty" for those who want two screens they can take with them. But he had to admit that the advantages would only be worthwhile "If you're not carrying it around constantly."

That comment was a reference to the weight of the W700ds. At over 10 pounds fully configured, the laptop will be tough to lug around. "When I'm on the move I want something light and portable," said "GOTBO" in the ZDNet blog comments. "An extra screen is just going to add to the weight." Another user on the same page wondered about the wisdom of adding a sliding screen, noting their "high failure rates" in mobile phones.

But it was xyz001, commenting at Notebook Review, who called the W700ds an "un-elegant idea and a bad piece of engineering...it is a step backwards to create such a heavy and fat portable pc."

"It's as ugly as sin," admitted Woodchuck2000 on a Hexus forum post, "but I'd still love one!"

See the video below for a demo of the ThinkPad W700ds.

Image: Lenovo