Lenovo launches 11.6-inch ThinkPad x121e for Europe, the Japanese market

It is a curious thing about consumer electronics: they sometimes disappear as fast as they hit shelves. That’s form of what happened with Lenovo’s ThinkPad x120e : months after our glowing review, it vanished from the company’s online store, never to come. (You’ll find it through Amazon and other retailers.) And though it remains MIA, Lenovo did just unveil the 11.6-inch ThinkPad x121e for Europe and the Japanese market — a transparent preview of what is at the horizon for us Yanks. This time around, it packs an Intel Core i3-2357 CPU, an AMD Fusion E-350 chip, or a Fusion C-50 APU. Other specs include a 1366 x 768 panel, as much as 320GB in HDD storage (or a 128GB solid-state drive), HDMI and VGA out, three USB 2.0 ports (one among them powered), a 4-in-1 memory card reader, and, in some configurations, a WiMAX radio. Looking on the model, it comes with a 3- or six-cell battery, the latter of which promises a max of eight-plus hours of battery life in case you pair it with an Intel-based system. It’s on sale now for Japanese business customers with general availability coming on the end of this month, and additionally it is listed on various European sites. Lenovo’s US division told us it doesn’t yet have a timetable to share, so for now you’ll just have hit the source links and accept a vicarious thrill.