The Lenovo ThinkPad X130e is a portable, rugged laptop designed for students. It’s the latest in the company’s line of 11.6 inch ThinkPad notebooks, following the X120e and X100e.
Lenovo had originally promised to start taking orders for the laptop today for $469 and up. But now the launch has been delayed until February.
The good news is that the product pages for the laptop are now live, so you look at pictures, check out the specs, and do just about everything but order one.
Lenovo will offer models with AMD E-300, AMD E450, or Intel Core i3-2367M processors. 3 and 6 cell battery options will be available with battery life up to 8.5 hours. The laptop can handle up to 8GB of memory and will be available with up to 500GB of hard drive space.
The ThinkPad X130e weighs about 3.9 pounds, which makes it kind of heavy for an ultraportable, but the laptop also has a rugged case which is designed to withstand damage inflicted by students. There’s a rubber bumper on the top, strong hinges, and recessed ports to help protect the laptop from abuse.
And I don’t like how Lenovo is marketing this as primarily a student’s laptop.
I’m slightly glad the x130e is delayed. Â Compared to the x120e it is not a very good laptop. Â Weighs 30% more, costs 80% more and only gets 7% more performance. Â (Comparing equivalent CPUs and battery sizes.)
And the keyboard! The three biggest regressions: no more recessed pgup/pgdn keys, no more insert key, and no space between every fourth Fn key.