On Monday, the first dual-screen notebook - ThinkPad W700ds - was formally launched by Lenovo. Designed as a 17” mobile workstation, the new Thinkpad - with the base model start price of $3,663 - is available immediately through Lenovo website and business partners.

Compared to its predecessor, W700, the Thinkpad is 0.5” thicker, with a 10.6” slide-out display hidden in its lid. While the main screen offers a resolution of 1920 x 1200, the smaller screen with 768 x 1280 is nearly 40% of the screen real estate of the main display. With its measurements being 16.1”x12.2”x2.1,” the Thinkpad is quite a substantial notebook.

Some of the core hardware components of Thinkpad W700ds include - Nvidia workstation graphics; Intel Core 2 processors; 4-8 GB memory; and 320, 640 or 960 GB hard drive capacity.

The notebook features 400-nit brightness and WUXGA resolution; 72 percent-wide color extent of the primary screen enables more than 50 percent more color intensity. Many of the specs of the new notebook – like the built-in digitizer and color calibrator for mobile workstations - are same as the previous model.

Though the dual-screen notebook is aimed at giving a new meaning to the idea of a mobile workstation or business desktop replacement, the web reviews of the W700ds are somewhat tepid. The laptop is bulky and weighty, and its battery time, when both the screens are used, is much below two hours – the reviews published say the battery time ranges from about 95 to 110 minutes with a standard 9-cell battery.