Mobile workstations are all the same. They’ve all got the same processors, same graphics, same memory and hard drives, right?

Wrong. This latest one from Lenovo is different. As you’ll see from the pic, it’s got a 10-inch colour display which pulls out from the main 17-inch screen; it also has a built in 128 x 80mm Wacom digitizer (and pen) and an integrated Pantone colour calibrator.

This is surely every industrial designer’s idea of mobile heaven - the ability to sketch out your designs on a colour accurate screen, and have all of your tool palettes set off to the side so you’ve got 17-inches of uninterrupted design space is pretty darn compelling. It’s also a powerful beast, so things don’t have to slow down when you start to formalise your design in 3D.

It looks like Santa will be bringing me one for Christmas (but unlike a puppy this will be just for Christmas as I have to give it back) so we’ll be taking a closer look at Lenovo’s W700 and a host of other mobile workstations in the January print/PDF edition of DEVELOP3D.

www.lenovo.com