The Computer goes Eco Friendly

Innovations will soon launch EcoSmart, an entire line of such products. For ex. keyboard, a mouse, speakers, a 4-port USB hub, a USB keyboard, a webcam and media card reader/writer. All of these are to be made from materials that include organic, biodegradable stuff – bamboo, to be more precise.

The reason bamboo is preferred by manufacturers of electronic eco-friendly products is not only that it’s reasonably durable and pliable. The best thing about this kind of wood is that cutting it down and making stuff out of it doesn’t affect a bamboo forest too grievously.

Bamboo Mouse and Keyboards

Although bamboo keyboard is still a new thing to most computer users, it is nevertheless gaining popularity.

The company is in Jiangxi’’s Tonggu County, which enjoys abundant bamboo resources.

A bamboo keyboard sells at 80-300 yuan (US$12-US$44), or slightly higher than a normal plastic one in China, according to sales manager Zhang. Students and home computer users are major consumers of the product in the country.

ASUS Bamboo Notebook

Asus was just gagging around with it when they took their concept bamboo laptop around the trade shows.

Essentially, these are going to be the standard 11.1″ Asus S6 and the 12″ Asus U6 (which they’ve previously covered in leather) cased in eco-friendly bamboo instead of plastic. No announcements yet on chipsets, but the current S6 uses a 1.66GHz Core 2 Duo T7700 Processor while the U6 runs a snappy 2.4GHz chip. Both pack a gig of RAM, a gig of super-quick DDR2 memory, and 100GB or more on the hard drive. The U6 rocked 3G internet connection capabilities, too, making this thing possibly the fastest environmentally conscious toy on the planet.

The new bambooed versions are expected to retail in the $1700 range, so they’re not totally out of reach, either.

Micro Innovations

Those accessories include speakers, a card reader, a webcam, USB hub, keyboard and a mouse. Hopefully the guts of these devices are a little greener as well, not just the casing.

Bamboo multimedia 2.0 channel amplified speakers contain the latest in sound technology in a beautifully crafted bamboo shell. Users enjoy rich sound performance and 8 watts of power while listening to music and movies through their computer or television. Other environmentally friendly bamboo computer accessories include a 1.3 mega-pixel webcam, 4 port USB hub, media card reader/writer and USB keypad.