W Series ThinkPad Laptops

[#1]

Well said bogdanstoic.

Those are indeed the facts. 

I would be very surprised, even shocked, if at this stage they offer any explanation other to repeat false assertions like it was Intel's fault, or that others have done the same, etc.

By breaking the digital audio (of lack of) issue into logical sub issues this really leaves Lenovo no room for the usual corporate-speak-- so I'm guessing we can look forward to more silence.

My opinion is this was a marketing and sales decision and not an engineering one. My opinion is that Lenovo calculated that the money saved against the small percentage of pissed-off customers and decided it was well worth it.

[#2]

everyone,

i appreciate your concerns and frustration but ask again that you refrain from making false accusations based on conjecture.

mark stated that he is looking into it.   it has only been one day and answers to questions like these unfortunately don't happen overnight.   please exercise patience while this is investigated.

again, than you for your understanding and cooperation.

-erik

[#3]

I sincerely agree that we wait and let them look into it.  I don't think Lenovo can escape this issue anymore so let's let them do their work for now.

However keep us update.

@ kclawrence:  nice list~!  Hopefully it own't be a huge hardware mod.

[#4]

I would like add that I I too agree with being patient and letting lenovos engineers give us a real answer (which hopefully does not take long and concludes with us obtaining digital out).    I would also like to thank lenovo for not doing what many other manufacturers have done, which is simply delete and ban issues / users from their forums when they post problems. 

Finally, I think I should commend all the people on this forum who complain when the products do not meet our expectations, I feel it is important to not let the quality of thinkpads slip, or let companies get away with mis leading consumers - intentional or not.

[#5]

I can't believe we are still having this converstation.

The W series is geared to being a workstation. Lenovo offers other notebooks for other media needs..

 Being a workstation you have the expansion ports to add your audio needs.

cut and dry.

 ----------------------------------------------------

Here is two more of MANY options..

http://www.soundblaster.com/products/product.asp?category=209&subcategory=669&product=16642 

OR

http://www.soundblaster.com/products/product.asp?category=1&subcategory=208&product=17751&nav=1

Message Edited by xpnet on 01-16-2009 06:36 AM

[#6]

xpnet, it is healthy to see that not everyone agrees.

Altough I agree that if you want professional digital audio you'll probably need a more extensive set of DACs/ADCs and SPDIF ports (and I would not trust an SPDIF port in the headphone jack very much), I disagree of your view of what a workstation is.

I don't think a workstation is a computer designed for bureaucratic work done on travel.

Even for professional programmers, the smaller T400 is probably a much better choice.

A workstation is for 3D work primarily, and other forms of heavy digital content creation, which are unlikely not to include audio.

What good would the W700 be for CAD only? What would the digitizer pad be for?

Why would you want the calibrated screen if not for working with photographs and video?

How often does video not include audio?

About the consumer models, those are very defficient regarding CPU, GPU, robustness, battery life and all other needs of a professional user.

The Ws don't have much more expansion options than consumer notebooks of any brand.

All offer ExpressCard.

The docking stations offer little more than a convenience for connecting cables (the only graphics card you can put in the advanced dock is obsolete and way worst than the internal one).

The problem here is that it seems irrational to exclude such a cheap feature such as digital audio output of ANY kind (not only DisplayPort).

BTW, if you think excluding a digital audio output is logical in a workstation, then what the heck are the microphone and headphone jacks good for? Videoconferencing? Is that what a workstation is for? Or is that more what smaller business notebooks are targeted at?

Miguel

[#7]

Good point Migle.

For those of us that actually work in digital content creation, which for me includes- video, audio, web, database, and application development-- I think most of us know what real workstations are. I have been using them for well over a decade. And I doubt you will find a credible desktop workstation that does not include robust digital audio processing with at least an X-Fi sound card at a bare minimum- and that can "Record What U Hear". One does not (and SHOULD NOT) need to use internal or external DACs to "Record What U hear"-- as in digital audio-- and in fact if you wanted flawless copies you would certainly not need to or want to re-encode and thereby degrade your content.

As for the Soundblaster products mentioned above-- the first one only fits in an Expresscard 54 slot-- which you won't get on a W700 equipped with a CF card reader option-- as most pros will opt for. The second USB device will "possibly" get the job done for audio passthrough-- but I would be skeptical of it supporting any of HD video's audio formats. And you have to carry it and more cables around with you when the whole point of DisplayPort was to eliminate that inconvienience.

Serious workstations support multi-media development tasks and audio is always one of those tasks.

As Migle states, when one works with video, one naturally expects the audio portion of such material to also be able to be captured and edited.

And moreover-- when one purchases an expensive BluRay drive option, YES, one does expect the entire video and audio programming on source material can be played back and with full fidelity-- especially on a workstation class machine.

[#8]

This is not something that affects me, but it is a bit shocking to hear. Lenovo has balanced this machine so well with the RAID, digitizer, calibrator and processor that I'm dissapointed they slipped up with something so elemental.

Just to add my 2 bob.... although many 3d/photo/CAD artists aren't dealing with audio most of the time, video editors do - and given the RAID and specs the W700 will be very desirable for any Windows video pro. That said, not having a modern digital out is disturbing for them and represents what I would speculate to be an oversight on Lenovo's part, rather than anything else.

[#9]

Any progress update?  Its Feb. now

[#10]

Mantice,

It is Feb, and I've delayed responding while trying to find a more substantive answer - one that explains in convincing detail what is, and why.  I know that's what this group expects.

Honestly, I haven't found that - no diagram, no specific single technical issue that someone, somewhere couldn't have overcome, no single decision made by someone in some company (Lenovo or core technology provider) - no silver bullet reason why audio isn't available on the port.  

What I have found so far, is that we don't support audio over displayport on any montevina systems as Matt Kohut wrote in an earlier post, and according to our dialog with ATI / Intel / AMD, audio will not be an option on displayport until the Capella release.  (it sounds like the capability will be available to the oem to implement or not at time of Capella - so you will want to focus on the overall integration on the platform, not just the chipset capability)

I know that audio was listed as an option in some of the whitepapers (of varying dates and revisions) and on wikipedia, and we crawled through a lot of intel pdf's but didn't find any case where it was defined as a standard component, guaranteed in the spec.   Please also keep in mind the development lead time on systems. 

Engineering says that it's just not supported on montevina - we didn't deliberately turn it off.   If anyone has another manufacturer's montevina based system that provides audio over display port and was in the market August / September of last year, and can cite and demonstrate the example (i.e. has it, and it works - not some white paper claim) then I'm happy to pursue this further with engineering.

As it stands, it seems to be a case that the capability wasn't there, and so we didn't provide it, not that the capability was there and we elected not to implement it.

Mark