Looking to add to its industry recognised green credentials, ASUS, have now produced a series of environmentally friendly Bamboo notebooks.
ASUS claim that this range is ‘green’ from conception, through production stages and all the way to disposal and if you are thinking "yeah, but they are just made of Bamboo - there’s no way they are really environmentally friendly" then ASUS would tell you that you are wrong.
Its ‘green’ research began back in 2002 - way before RoHS and WEEE directives made it a matter of legal
compliance. The battery for example uses ‘Super Hybrid Engine‘ technology which apparently allows a battery life extension of 35%-70% over similarly spec’d notebooks. Now, as Gajit-eers we hear a lot of acronyms and statistics but in a real world context it’s difficult to know just what it all means, so to put these battery developments in perspective – it reduces CO2 emissions by 12.3kg per notebook. So, when you consider that ASUS sold approximately 6 million notebooks last year that equates to an annual saving of 73.8 million tonnes of CO2, roughly equal to saving 36 million trees per year. All pretty impressive stuff, and that’s just for the battery savings alone.
It’s no surprise to find the Taiwan based company innovating and putting a new and stylish twist on existing products - after all, this is the company that practically created the notebook market with the Eee range.
The Bamboo series notebook is no exception to this innovative approach and is svelte to say the least; available in 2 different sizes, 12.1" and 11.1" models, the larger of the 2 comes in at 250 grams heaver than the 11.1" version but that’s not to say its a fatty; it actually weighs just 1.57Kg.
To get technical for just a minute; the series ships with a 2.53Ghz Core2Duo Processor andVista Home Premium as standard. To ensure that the hardware is up to the task of running Vista, notoriously a bit of a resource-hog, the bods at ASUS took it upon themselves to put 4MB of RAM in as standard - a smart move!
Often the graphics card on laptops are an integrated affair capable of playing only the most basic games (at best!) and not well suited to 3D intensive graphics applications. Not so in this case, the 12.1″ Bamboo beauty comes with a dedicated NVIDIA GeForce 9300M with 256MB RAM and whilst it’s no match for a dedicated desktop gaming setup it will at least get you on your way. Both versions come with a WXGA display with ‘Color-Shine‘ and ‘Crystal-Shine‘ technology - basically anti-glare and improved brightness ratios for improving performance in bright conditions.
This laptop has some pretty impressive specs, and for the price tag – it should. It’s not the most expensive in the world, starting at £1349, but it does carry the extra weight of its eco-friendly research and credentials. On the down-side, we were expecting a little more Bamboo rather than a little strip below the keyboard and around the display.
If you’re in the market for a new, well spec’d laptop and the thought of doing your bit for the environment gives you a warm glow inside then to take a closer look at this Bamboo range from ASUS.