ThinkTablet, more details emerge! Specifications and launch

We blew the whistle on the new ThinkPad Tablet or ThinkTablet last week, and  now we bring you some more delicious news! Looks like we were scooped on this news by the boys and girls over at  ThisIsMyNext.com, the team that originally brought us all the tech goodness at  Engadget

The new ThinkPad Tablet or ‘ThinkTablet’ is being positioned as a prosumer  with Business Class features and full support for IT managers.

Some of the details we can glean are a ‘PortFolio Case’ dock, with ThinkPad  Edge style keyboard. Full pen implementation for notes, document editing and presentations. Front and rear camera for scanning, recoding, barcode reading and of course  video calls!

Cloud support with safe and secure access to documents and applications online, and remote access to your home or office network.

Sound good so far? How about 1080p HD support with an IPS display for after hours entertainment. Full support to create and edit in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Adobe Acrobat Reader. A bevy of Social Network apps and functionality, plus access to the Android App Store.

Now this is also interesting, obviously the ThinkTablet will have Wi Fi and 3g with 4g on the way, but we will also be able to use out new ThinkPad tablet as a Wi-Fi hotspot via a ‘software’ router. Now that we like!

As if all of that wasn’t enough Lenovo have included a Mini HDMI slot to output to a TV, a Projector for presentations, or just hook up to an external display. Other ports include Micro and full size USB, an SD Card slot plus full syncing with your home or office PC. We love it!

So, Lenovo are positioning the ThinkTablet as the ‘ThinkPad Commercial Media Tablet’

ThinkTablet Specifications

Processor – NVIDIA Tegra 2

Operating System – Android 3

Display – 10.1″ WXGA IPS panel with 1280×800 resolution, 16:10 aspect ration

Battery – 8hr battery life with Wi-Fi

Ports – USB 2.0 – Micro USB – 3 in 1 SD card Reader and Mini HDMI

Connectivity – Wi-Fi and 3G

Storage – 16GB – 32GB – 64 GB

Enterprise Friendly

As well as being a Media Tablet, the new ThinkPad Slate will of course have a slew of the usual security features that we expect from the brand, data encryption, an anti theft app and remote data Wipe or Disable. As the ThinkTablet will be used primarily ‘offsite’ a range of deployment and administration devices will be available, and the one that strikes us as the most useful in the enterprise and of value to large IT Depts is the ‘Zero Touch Deployment’ feature. IT Admins will be able to ship one of the ThinkPad Tablets to a remote worker and load corporate settings and policies  
via Wi-Fi or 3g

ThinkTablet Apps and Software.

The new ThinkPad Tablet will come loaded with a variety of apps including Skype, Gmail and eBuddy. Of course the tablet supports Flash, Remote Desktop by Citrix and Auto Config by LANDesk.

And what would a Tablet be without facebook and twitter? You’ll also find Weather, Amazon Kindle and Amazon Media plus Zinio Magazine reader, and of course to entertain yourself, the ubiquitous Angry Birds plus a host of other Apps available from the store.

When we first blew the whistle on the ThinkTablet last week, we had thought that this was going to be a Windows 7 machine. Not to be. What we do have though looks like a pretty impressive Tablet. We are over in Raleigh next week at Think World Headquarters and hope to get hands or at least ‘eyes’ on.

OK, so the specifications are fairly standard, Tegra 2, 16/32/64GB etc, but it the way the ThinkPad design team and engineers seem to have stitched the whole package together, and created a ThinkTablet that sits well in the  
higher end prosumer niche, yet reaches out into the corporate space so effectively.

It looks like Lenovo have done a superb job with the ThinkTablet. If only that Portfolio Keyboard dock had an i5 processor and Windows 7! Well we can  dream.