Lenovo Targets the Education Market with Rugged ThinkPad X130e Notebook

Intel’s Classmate series of notebooks have been so far pretty much the only classroom-ready laptop alternative available to schools, but this isn’t the case anymore as Lenovo has just announced the ThinkPad X130e notebook that seems to be a direct competitor for Intel's Classmate project.

Since the X130e is built especially for education, Lenovo concentrated on making its new ThinkPad tougher than ever before and started by including a rubber bumper that circles the chassis along with a thicker bezel shielded by 1.2mm of plastic.

But this is only the start of the list as Lenovo has also added recessed and reinforced ports, stronger hinges as well as an accelerometer to protect the hard drive.

Moving to the inside, schools can chose to configure the11.6-inch X130e with an Intel Core i3-2367M processor, as well as AMD Fusion E-300 and E-450 APUs paired with 2GB of RAM (upgradeable to 8GB), and a hard drive providing up to 500GB of storage.

Other features include Bluetooth 3.0 connectivity, a 6-cell battery rated for 8.5 hours of battery life, three USB 2.0 sockets, HDMI, VGA, and Ethernet ports, as well as a 4-in-1 memory card reader.

Startup time is estimated at under 20 seconds thanks to Lenovo’s RapidBoot technology, and the company is also offering schools the option to customize the laptops by tweaking the BIOS or by going with a colored lid.

"At Lenovo ThinkTank 2011 we brought hundreds of distinguished educators together, and the resounding feature CIOs told us that ranks highest on their list of features important for PC purchases is 'ruggedness'," said Dilip Bhatia, vice president, ThinkPad Business Unit, Lenovo. 

"While we've built tough products for years that pass many military-grade tests, we've made specific improvements required for a laptop to be successful in an education environment with the ThinkPad X130e," concluded the company’s rep.

Lenovo’s X130e will go on sale on December 20th starting at $469 (roughly 350 EUR), but the catch is that you won’t be able to buy one for yourself as these are available only to schools.