Lenovo laptops

The Lenovo 61p series was the last line of products officially designed by IBM (before Lenovo bought the Thinpad series). These are solid machines. I was looking for a new laptop but for some reason Lenovo never crossed my mind (odd considering I worked for IBM for 7 years up until 2 weeks ago).

Thanks for bringing this up Barry.
 
Just got it, it's pretty much everything you'd want. It has ExpressCard 54mm and PC Card (P2) slots, three USB ports, firewire, ethernet, etc.; only thing missing is an SD card slot for editing scene files or downloading firmware updates, and I've got an ExpressCard->SD reader so that takes care of that.

The DVD drive is mounted in a removable bay, which can be replaced with a blu-ray drive, or an additional battery, or -- get this -- a second hard disk. You could plug in a 160GB hard disk and offload tons of footage at full SATA speed, not USB speed.

But this is the killer: they make an external docking station that includes another expansion bay, port replicator, all that stuff, and also an SD reader and a CompactFlash reader (for Red One footage) but it also includes a PCI Express expansion slot! So for around $200 (on ebay) you can get an expansion chassis that lets you use the Blackmagic Intensity Pro card on your laptop!

So, plug it into the dock and you've got the potential for a reasonably portable offload station with three physical hard disks, or two hard disks and a blu-ray drive, compact flash and SD and P2 and ExpressCard, and a BlackMagic Intensity Pro card, and running Adobe OnLocation for field monitor/waveform/vectorscope and live digital disk recorder. Then pluck it off the station when you go travelling...

So far, it's kinda perfect.
 
Barry_Green said:
Just got it, it's pretty much everything you'd want. It has ExpressCard 54mm and PC Card (P2) slots, three USB ports, firewire, ethernet, etc.; only thing missing is an SD card slot for editing scene files or downloading firmware updates, and I've got an ExpressCard->SD reader so that takes care of that.

The DVD drive is mounted in a removable bay, which can be replaced with a blu-ray drive, or an additional battery, or -- get this -- a second hard disk. You could plug in a 160GB hard disk and offload tons of footage at full SATA speed, not USB speed.

But this is the killer: they make an external docking station that includes another expansion bay, port replicator, all that stuff, and also an SD reader and a CompactFlash reader (for Red One footage) but it also includes a PCI Express expansion slot! So for around $200 (on ebay) you can get an expansion chassis that lets you use the Blackmagic Intensity Pro card on your laptop!

So, plug it into the dock and you've got the potential for a reasonably portable offload station with three physical hard disks, or two hard disks and a blu-ray drive, compact flash and SD and P2 and ExpressCard, and a BlackMagic Intensity Pro card, and running Adobe OnLocation for field monitor/waveform/vectorscope and live digital disk recorder. Then pluck it off the station when you go travelling...

So far, it's kinda perfect.
Click to expand...

Barry, you're making my life more dificult everyday :)

I'm seriously considering this. Add to that the ability of using NEATVIDEO in After Effects, and I'm...really...on the edge... of not getting a Macbook pro.

Quick question: If I import on the P2cms on a PC, do the neat video thing in after effects and export a quicktime from the program, can I work with it on a mac? After Effects currently supports native mxf's, correct? So I could in theory take the new After Effects MXF and then do the import p2 thing in Final Cut Studio?

Basically, this means that I would get this laptop for offloading and after effects de-noising, and actually upgrade my g5 to a Macpro octo 2.8. Is this a Possible workflow?
 
Why would you want a Macbook Pro? If there are compelling reasons for it, that will answer your question. If there aren't compelling reasons, why spend 2x to 3x as much to get a system that won't do nearly as much for an HVX shooter?

As for your specific questions, you could import using P2 Viewer or P2 CMS, you could import those MXF files directly into After Effects or Premiere Pro CS3, etc; I don't know if you can export an FCP-compatible Quicktime from there though.

Of course, if you have After Effects on the Windows system, you'll also have Premiere Pro. So, I say -- try Premiere Pro CS3. I had occasion to watch a few FCP diehards sit through an Adobe demo and half of 'em came out of it saying "I love FCP, but I am seriously considering going with CS3 now."

I struggled with the Mac question for a new laptop, if they had a quad-core MBP I might have gone that way but now I'm pretty glad I didn't. I can't imagine giving up DV Rack/OnLocation, a PC Card slot, multiple hard drive capability, interchangeable optical drives, and now a PCI Express expansion port, all for half the price of the 15" MBP. Couldn't do it.

Only reason I can see for getting a Mac is if you absolutely positively must use FCP. And if you absolutely positively must use FCP, then looking at Windows hardware isn't really relevant, right? But if you don't absolutely positively have to use FCP, download the PPro CS3 demo -- you'll get it free with After Effects anyway, so might as well play with it. Oh, and you'll get OnLocation free too, the Creative Suite includes all those programs. Oh, and PhotoShop too.
 
Barry, thanks for the input. You really made me think into the whole investment/results part of the deal. The Lenovo proposition is really fantastic for an HVX shooter. All the expansion and native support for the P2 workflow make the machine in theory heads and shoulders above a macbook pro for on the field recording/editing/monitoring. Even tough CS3 exists on the mac side, its the expandability and integration of the Lenovo that makes this PC offering so appealing.


I was actually looking into the advantages of working with Prores in FCS2, but it looks like working with cineform on Premiere Pro can produce similar, if not better results.

Thanks for the heads up on the Lenovo. We actually have very easy access to them over here in Macau, so I'll try to check them out and put them trough some testing (to see if it works for me).

If I wasn't used to Mac and FCP and FCS, this would surelly be a no brainer. Just not sure how I'll miss Livetype (great for on the fly great looking titles) and the stability in long projects.

A hard decision, indeed.
 
Geez, this is really looking good & I just came from the sony vaio thread. Was this an online offer, if so do you have a link?

Now that you have had a couple weeks with it how is it working out for you?

Thanks!
 
I was checking out lenovo.com last night, and it looks like their current special pricing ends on feb 18th, so hurry if anyone is wanting one.

If you click "special offers" you can look at the laptops through that link. It looks like some of 'em are up to 450 off or something. Don't remember exactly.

For the record, having pc card and expresscard is awesome. I have that in my large laptop, and use the express card with eSATA card and edit off of the drives I have in an eSATA enclosure. It's a relatively inexpensive way to get massive amounts of raided storage that can almost take full advantage of the 3gbps throughput of SATA II drives.

I hope that I can still find a laptop with both slots when I have the money to upgrade to a smaller (but better) laptop.

later,
Jason
 
Jason Ramsey said:
I
For the record, having pc card and expresscard is awesome. I have that in my large laptop, and use the express card with eSATA card and edit off of the drives I have in an eSATA enclosure. It's a relatively inexpensive way to get massive amounts of raided storage that can almost take full advantage of the 3gbps throughput of SATA II drives.
Click to expand...

which is the one you use for hooking up storage? the express card or PC card?
 
the expresscard. I use the pcmcia slot for offloading p2 cards.

I have a SIIG expresscard to eSATA which has to eSATA ports. You just get something like that, and an eSATA enclosure for your drives. My eSATA enclosure is pretty decent for the money. Takes two drives and can be raid 0 or 1 without software. The eSATA cards also generally have various raid options that are software based.

eSATA from an expresscard is rated at like 2.5gbps, I think.

Later,
Jason
 
I got it direct at Lenovo.com. It's been fantastic so far. I'm having my share of struggles with it now trying to install CS3 and a BlackMagic Intensity Pro card, but hey -- did everyone catch that? I'm installing a BlackMagic Intensity Pro card, in a LAPTOP! (granted it's in an external dock, but still, a laptop...)
 
How heavy is that + The external dock? I.E how portable? That really caught my eye.

That PCI-E slot could be used for a video card as well and a host of other things.
 
It's transportable, not truly portable. Not battery powered, you need AC. The dock probably doubles the weight of the unit, adds maybe six inches to the depth and maybe another three or four inches to the width. But consider that the dock adds another hard drive bay (bringing the total to three if you don't need an optical drive), as well as a compactflash slot for offloading Red footage and an SD slot for Red or HPX/HVX scene files and firmware, plus all the rest... and I got the dock for $190 on e-bay... it was irresistible.
 
That's exactly what I'm considering. You can really customize it to make it worth the portability and it's not like the laptop shuts down once the dock dies. You also have no need to power an external monitor, which means you're really moving into a more-portable territory with that dock. The fact that you can slap an Intensity inside really opens up another option for recording when dealing with say an HV20 or other HDMI cameras. Just as well, Component Intensity Cards for HVX recording.

Very nice find and report. This might change my thoughts on building a Cube machine to handle things... sigh. Might be Frankensteining again here soon.
 
Kholi said:
Maybe I oughta get my hands on one to see if I can turn it into an OSX machine.


HMMM.
Click to expand...

Kholi,

If you can turn one into a windows xp / osx machine I will fed-x you a case of your favorite beer or beverage for the DIY info :)
 
I just got my T61p and I couldn't be happier. Works perfect plus it has a front SD card slot for formating the SD card. I was able to install Adobe CS3 without a problem and it runs smooth. Very happy with it.
 
brianluce said:
I'm wondering if, considering what you get at this price point, if it still makes much sense to buy a desktop.
Click to expand...
Well, that was kind of my thinking in getting the dock, is to see how practical it is. I've still got the 24" Dell, the mouse, the keyboard, everything... so sliding the laptop into the dock should be equivalent to a desktop (except you can undock it and take it with you). Other docks, not so much -- but this dock lets you install an additional hard disk (or even multiple, interchangeable hard disks) and a PCIe card.

Haven't been able to make the Intensity Pro work in the dock though, and frankly I don't know if that's even possible. If it is, it would be ideal!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top