Asus Eco Book bamboo laptop stars at CeBIT

CeBIT, the world's biggest IT fair, opened yesterday in Hanover with (you've guessed it) a big emphasis 'green' computing.

One gadget in particular seems to have caught the spirit of the times; a bamboo-encased laptop made by Asus, which has finally hit the market after several months of testing whether the sustainable outer shell could withstand prolonged use (and whether tech journalists could write a single article on the notebook without mentioning pandas -- oops, I've gone and done it now).

"Bamboo is the most sustainable raw material there is," said Jellent Sun, a senior director at Asus. "It grows very fast and therefore we decided to combine bamboo with metal, and leave out the plastic." Some other more established players have shown a bit more scepticism in the matter: "Green IT is hype," admitted Thomas Tauer of IBM Germany, "but it is an issue that will keep us busy for a long time".

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