The system offers a 17” LCD display, which rivals desktop monitors with its 1920×1200 (WUXGA) resolution and 400 nit brightness. That display is powered by a NVIDIA Quardro FX3700M graphics card with 1 Gbyte of memory, which helps to make short work of most graphics-intensive processes. Of course, a workstation must have more to it than a big display and fancy graphics card. Here, the M700 brings an Intel Core2 Extreme Q9300 CPU to the table, backed up by 4 Gbytes of DDR3 memory, to make sure workstation performance expectations are met. Lenovo also integrates 2 Gbytes of Intel Turbo memory into the W700, which further boosts performance for Windows Vista users. The Intel Turbo memory helps to boost the performance of the system’s pair of 160 Gbyte Seagate Sata hard drives, which are configured as a RAID 0 array of 300 Gbytes. The Intel Turbo memory uses Microsoft’s Readyboost and Readydrive caching technologies to boost hard drive access. The combination of high-speed drives, Raid 0 and Intel Turbo memory makes the W700 a real performer, especially for those looking to edit digital video.

Our review sample has a price point of about $5,300, making the W700 an expensive performer, to say the least. But, that big hit on the pocket book does buy a lot of capabilities. Our review unit came configured as follows:

• Intel Core 2 Extreme processor QX9300 (2.53GHz 1066MHz 12MBL2)
• Windows Vista Ultimate 64  
• 17" WUXGA 400NIT TFT LCD Display  
• NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700M 128-core CUDA parallel computing processor 1GB (dedicated)
• 4 GB PC3-8500 DDR3 SDRAM 1067MHz SODIMM Memory (2 DIMM)
• Ultranav + Fingerprint Reader + Pantone Color Sensor      1  
• 1.3 Megapixel Integrated Camera      1  
• Primary SATA RAID 0 - Dual 160GB 7200RPM Sata RAID Enabled Hard Disk Drives 3 Gb/s  
• DVD Recordable 8x Max Ultrabay Enhanced (Serial ATA)  optical drive  
• Express Card(54mm) + Express Card(34mm) expansion slots
• Integrated WiFi wireless LAN adapters (Intel WiFi Link 5300 A/G/N)  
• 9 cell Li-Ion Battery