Asus Bamboo, The Jungle Boy

Boris | 2:30 am | January 31, 2008 | Concept Laptops, Green Laptops

Laptop life expectancy. How long is it? With the speed things are changing, CD for DVD, HDD for SSD, ABC for XYZ, how often do you want your laptop to be replaced? Our conservative guess is 1.5 years, at most. 18 months before you throw your laptop away, replacing it by a newer, faster, better one.

Portable devices and, in particular, laptops are not easy on the environment — they produce toxins when they end up in landfills. But the industry, while encouraging to spend more, is at the same time trying to show that it cares. Not just about terabytes, megapixels and inches – but about laptop ac adapters that don’t waste as much electricity, batteries that are easier to recycle, and components made from plants.

Asus brings us the latest in eco-friendly notebook design. The Asus Eco Book, as it’s dubbed, is encased in natural bamboo. Building computers out of wood is not new. Apple’s first computer was nothing more than a homemade motherboard inside a wooden box. But Asus had a much harder task, since the components of a laptop are so close together and heat insulation is an issue when something as flammable as wood is used. Apart from a bunch of homeless, anorexic pandas that rely on bamboo as their habitat and food, Asus will please everybody if the concept works.