Lenovo Preps New ThinkPad X130e Ultraportable for Schools

Lenovo, hoping to offer schools another choice to use for their mass laptop rollouts, has apparently taken the mold of their existing 11.6” ThinkPad X120e consumer notebook, upgraded the chassis to be much more durable, and readied it for some other aesthetic and software customizations as the ThinkPad X130e.

Among the physical changes that Lenovo made include a rubber bumper on the lid, 33% stronger corners, hinges that can withstand up to 30,000 open-close cycles, and 1.2mm-thick bezel plastic to help protect the display. School can be a very rough environment at times, so all of these improvements will help to keep the laptops running for as long as possible.

In addition, all of the ports on the sides of the notebooks have been reinforced and recessed, so hopefully we won't be seeing broken USB ports and loose AC adaptor jacks on these any time soon. Lenovo also offers custom asset tags, BIOS modifications, custom disk image deployment and various colour options as well.

As far as specs go, Lenovo's press release tells us that both AMD and Intel processor options will be available – either the AMD Fusion E-300, E-450, or the Intel Core i3-2367M, with their respective integrated graphics cores (AMD Radeon HD 6310, 6320, or Intel HD Graphics 3000). From the photos, I can make out three USB ports, a Kensington lock slot, a card reader, a wired LAN jack (there is also WiFi for internet access), a headphone jack, and HDMI and VGA video outputs for all those class presentations.

The 11.6” display will probably have a standard 1366x768 resolution and a matte finish. Storage will consist of either a 128GB solid-state drive or a hard drive of unknown capacity, and the 6-cell battery will be able to offer 8.5 hours of constant use.

Weight may be an issue with the ThinkPad X130e, however - 3.93 lbs (1.78 kg) (with the six-cell battery) is pretty heavy for an 11.6” machine. The durability features may be worth the extra weight, though. Lenovo will make the X130e available on December the 20^th, starting at $469. We don't know if these will be available for the general public to readily purchase, but hopefully they will be. See the press release here.

UPDATE: You can now read more about and purchase the ThinkPad X130e here