Yes, this was probably one of the worst kept secrets in recent memory – Lenovo formally introduced the dual display ThinkPad W700ds mobile workstation here at CES 2009. I’m sure you’ve seen a good deal of information and pics on this bad boy by now but oh well – here’s more info.

Lenovo held a reception/happy hour this evening at the Venetian where they had the W700ds on display front and center. Photographer Bambi Cantrell gave a live demo of the W700ds in front of reporters (including yours truly) at AquaKnox.

In case you’re not familiar with this beast of a laptop (I refuse to call it a notebook), the W700ds is the first dual screen mobile workstation to hit the market. Great for folks into digital content creation, oil and gas exploration, computer-aided design, and photography, the W700ds has both a beautiful 17 inch display, and a secondary 10.6 inch display similar to the Lenovo IdeaPad S10 netbook display.  The second screen slides out of the PC cover behind the primary screen and it’s adjustable to fit the user’s viewing angle by up to 30 degrees – similar to how you might use a car’s rear view mirror tilts.

Folks who have multi-monitor setups at work or at home can truly appreciate what Lenovo is trying to accomplish here with the ThinkPad W700ds. However, if you’re not one of those, and you’re wondering why bother – just think about how many times you click “Alt-Tab” to switch between your many open applications – or simply if you’re working on a large Photoshop workspace. The second display instantly becomes valuable space because you can place your other important applications there or place important tools to be used in Photoshop or whatever application you’re using at the time.

Once you go multi-monitor, you won’t go back.

But let’s not forget about the primary monitor either. This is one sweet looking display. The notebook can configured with an optional 400 nit WUXGA display with twice the brightness of previous ThinkPad notebooks. Even better is the extraordinary 72 percent wide color gamut which enables more than 50 percent greater color intensity – perfect for photography. Here’s a picture from the live demo showcasing a MacBook Pro against the new W700ds:

As far as specs and horsepower – this is indeed a workstation (which happens to be mobile). The W700ds features choices of Intel mobile quad core and Extreme processors with optional dual hard drives with RAID configurations and choices of NVIDIA Quadro FX mobile graphics. You can have up to 8GB of DDR3 memory and choices of either SSDs or HDDs for a max of 960GB of storage space. Other features include optional DVD burner/player and high speed UDMA compact flash reader, support for Dual Link DVI, DisplayPort, VGA, 7 in 1 multicard reader, and five USB ports. Network connectivity include Wi-Fi and optional WiMAX.

Interested? It’ll cost ya. The W700ds is available now at www.lenovo.com with prices starting at $3,663 (there appears to be a sale price right now starting at just over 3K). Oh yeah – this big boy weighs 10.9 pounds. Yup.. it’s big.

[Check it out]

Technorati Tags: Lenovo, ThinkPad W700ds moble workstation