Just days after Lenovo Group decided to refocus its Think brand onto high-end devices, the company introduced the first ThinkPad ever that was designed for students and which comes with Google Chrome operating system. The ThinkPad X131e is considerably more expensive than other Chromebooks, but it comes with an x86 processor and some rugged features found in traditional ThinkPad laptops.

Lenovo ThinkPad X131e laptop features Intel Core i3-2367m processor, 11.6” anti-glare screen with 1366*768 resolution, up to 500GB hard drive and up to 8GB of DDR3 memory. The notebook is equipped with 720p webcam, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, stereo speakers, microphone, D-Sub and HDMI 1.4 outputs, two USB 3.0 ports, one USB 2.0 powered port as well as memory card reader (SD/SDHC/SDXC/MMC slot).

Throughout the course of a typical school day, students’ laptops are often subject to extreme wear and tear. To help school-proof them, the ThinkPad X131e has rugged features including a rubber bumper around the top cover and stronger corners to protect the system in the case of an accidental drop. The hinges and hinge brackets are also strengthened to last more than 50 000 open and close cycles. The Windows versions of the X131e also provide active protection system for hard drives, which halts HDDs and parks heads in case an accidental drop is detected by built-in sensors; the Chrome-based version does not seem to support the feature.

“The ThinkPad X131e has proven to be very successful in education environments. With the rugged features we added to the X131e, we’ve seen reduced failure rates in the field. This is a huge benefit to schools and students. We are pleased to be able to offer this hardened ThinkPad Chromebook as a great computer for schools,” said Jerry Paradise, executive director of product marketing at ThinkPad Product Group.

Lenovo’s ThinkPad X131e Chromebook, provides students, educators, and IT administrators with an intuitive, easy-to-manage, and rugged laptop for all their computing needs right out of the box. Using Google Apps for Education along with thousands of web apps in the Chrome Web Store, students can easily create documents, edit spreadsheets, view multimedia videos, create slide show presentations and view PDF files.

“Chromebooks are in use today by more than one-thousand K-12 schools, and they make an ideal one-to-one device because they’re more cost effective, easier to manage and maintain than traditional laptops or tablets. Lenovo has a great reputation in schools for making durable and reliable laptops, so we’re excited to partner with them to introduce the ThinkPad X131e Chromebook,” said Caesar Sengupta, director of product management of Chrome OS at Google.

The ThinkPad X131e Chromebook will be available starting February 26^th via special bid volume pricing starting at $429. Interested K-12 institutions should contact their Lenovo Sales Representative.

Tags: Lenovo, ThinkPad, Google, Chrome