Tablet makers appear to see a big market for selling devices to students. After Datawind’s blockbuster launch of the world’s cheapest Tablet Aakash and the more recent launch of Classpad, it is the turn of E-class Education System Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of public listed stationery products maker Sundaram Multi Pap Ltd to launch an education Tablet.

The company has launched a new Tablet PC called ‘e-class Tablet’. The Tablet comes inbuilt with e-class content and has been developed by Sundaram Group for Maharashtra State Board students. The Tablet has the entire syllabus of a selected standard preloaded inside it in a video format that includes animations, audio and visuals.

There are two models of the Tablet, a basic and a premium one. The basic model comes with a resistive touchscreen and is priced at Rs 8,000, while the capacitive touchscreen model is priced at Rs 12,000.

The Tablet has a 7inch touchscreen, runs on the Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) operating system and is powered by a 1.2GHz processor. The internal memory of the device is 8GB that can be expanded up to 64GB. The device also has a USB port and supports 3G (with an external dongle). The company claims that the Tablet will provide up to 12 hours of battery life.

The ‘e-class’ education system has been developed by the company is for standards 1 to 10 and is based on the Maharashtra State Board syllabus (for Marathi as well as English medium). The company claims that it has already been installed in more than 300 schools and 1,000 coaching institutes in the state. The company plans to cater to the 1 lakh plus schools and 20 million students of the Maharashtra State Board with their e-class education system.

In terms of specifications, the Tablet scores well over the Aakash Tablet, but that is obvious since it is more than three times the price of Aakash. The Classpad Tablet from Classteacher Learning System is a better match to this Tablet in terms of price and specifications.

And unlike Aakash, which is basically a low cost no frills Tablet, both e-class Tablet and Classpad come preloaded with educational content. But then Classpad caters to a bigger target audience compared to the e-class Tablet which is primarily focused on the students of the Maharashtra State Board.