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Returning to the blogging for Asus project, they have six computers they'll be lending out. Something that looks like a smaller iMac, a 17" gaming laptop, a 15" personal entertainment laptop, a 14" business laptop, a 12" "Ecobook" laptop in bamboo, and a 10" top-spec netbook, the S101. The last two immediately caught my eye. I already have a nice multipurpose 17" laptop, everyone makes those these days, they do what laptops generally do. It's the possibilities of ultra-small laptops, where it's more of a challenge cramming everything in and getting it to work well, that interest me.
They're both pretty, which Asus seems to be stressing a great deal, but while that's all very pleasant, laptops all look stylish these days and I have more pressing concerns than fashion. Size was my first consideration. For a secondary laptop, I need something small enough to use as a bedside laptop or put on my crowded sewing desk, and light enough that whisking it through to the kitchen to check a recipe doesn't take a moment's thought. Yet it also needs to be big enough that I can enlarge the text and still have a screen that makes sense, and have a keyboard large enough to type on without courting RSI. After my experiences with the 9" EEE PC 900, I think a 10" screen would be usable but a 12" screen would be better, although this would make it a smidgen more awkward for the rare occasions when I'd need to take it out of the flat. In the situations I've described above, robustness is also a useful quality, and here the S101 netbook has the edge since it has a solid-state drive. SSDs come on much more quickly, handy if you just want to check something or jot down a note, and are less fragile due to not having any moving parts, which would presumably mean that it's safe to move the laptop to another room without having to put it into hibernation first. However, the Ecobook is meant to have a relatively robust build as well, so it's not trailing as far behind on that point as it could.
It leaps ahead when it comes to the spec, naturally. Even running Vista as opposed to the more slimline XP sported by the S101, 4GB RAM and 320GB hard drive vs. 1GB and 16GB simply cannot be ignored. The S101 has just about enough storage that you could squeeze in your text files and a picture or two, but you couldn't have videos or music and you'd have to be careful about how much software you added. Admittedly I wouldn't bother editing images or watching films on such a small screen, I use online streaming for my audiobooks, and it's the age of YouTube, so I could probably manage fine, but I'll still take as much storage as I can get. They tell me that everything tends to run slower on these lower-spec netbooks, which could be frustrating if I were to have Firefox, the audiobook software, a game such as solitaire, and the word processor or e-mail client open at once, as I often do.
Vista vs. XP is a swings-and-roundabouts issue. XP does have many advantages and most people prefer it, although I must shamefacedly admit that I've got rather fond of Vista now that I'm used to its little quirks. I'm planning to put the laptop through its paces with regard to as much disability software and hardware as I can scrape up, as well as the general uses that everyone wants to know about, and disability software tends to be created by small companies or individuals who don't update it often. Quite a lot of it, therefore, is a great deal happier on XP, just as I've encountered several Firefox add-ons which throw a hissyfit when presented with Firefox 3. That's now, however. I'm not someone who replaces her computer every year, I need to look to the future. Even with XP being official for netbooks now, it can't be denied that it's being phased out and everything is moving Vista-wards.
Both computers have three USB ports, just enough to run the wireless keyboard, mouse and headphones, so they're neck and neck there. The S101 doesn't have a DVD drive, which is perfectly sensible on a netbook but would mean having to buy an external DVD drive if I wanted to install my printer software or what have you. Some netbook manufacturers are including an external DVD drive with the netbook, which for the higher priced models such as the S101 I would consider a wise move. Plus the speakers are probably better on the Ecobook as well. The Ecobook won.
The Ecobook
I felt a visceral tug when I saw this laptop. Part of me took one look and joyously squealed, "Trees!" Like Ursula Le Guin, who prides herself on being "the most arboreal science fiction writer", I have a slight obsession with trees. My desktop backgrounds are always botanical, my quilts are becoming more and more so, and I could tell you every kind of wood that I have in my flat, from the rosewood Bluthner piano to the beech doorknobs on my kitchen units to the cheapie untreated pine bookcases in the hall. Anything which evokes trees is a instant hook-in for me.
I don't spend all my time metaphorically swinging about in the branches, though, so let's look at this a mite more analytically. The first thing that will strike anyone about this laptop is undoubtedly the visuals. We've had years of variations on the same look for laptops. You could have any colour of the rainbow, although grey, black or white would return somewhere in the laptop, so the outside colour would have to tone well with that. There were possibilities for stripes or sparkles, gloss or satin finish, metallic edgings or touchpad buttons, but at the end of the day it would always be plastic. This baby is covered in bamboo, with all the beauty and character of natural wood, immediately setting it apart from any laptop that has come before. For some reason Asus appears to have teamed this with a keyboard in grey, a colour that is unlikely to complement the warm honey tones of bamboo, but the prototype photos vary wildly and don't show the inside of the laptop well, so perhaps it will look better in reality. They seem to have picked up on the traditional use of bamboo in Japanese art, which should do good things for the design in terms of clean lines and elegance.
Bamboo is a plant with many useful applications. As a wood, it's beautiful to look at, tough yet lightweight, and can be used for anything from chopping boards and fruit bowls to flooring and scaffolding. It can also be made into a fabric, which supposedly has wondrous anti-bacterial and quick-drying properties along with a silky texture. I have some bamboo facecloths, which lived up to the hype, and clothing, which mostly didn't. Quilters who've tried it tell me that it makes a fabulous quilt wadding, and knitters also rave about bamboo yarn. While browsing bamboo clothing online a while ago, I found some ridiculously overpriced bamboo knickers where the website informed you that, "BAMBOO IS BREATHABLE, BIODEGRADABLE AND DOES NOT NEED LOTS OF PESTICIDES AND FERTLISERS. BAMBOO CAN GROW BY 3 METRES OVERNIGHT." As![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mirrorshard remarked, there are many things one wants knickers to do, but growing by 3 metres overnight isn't one of them.
The real question, of course, is how green this laptop actually is, and whether Asus are aiming for the truly eco-conscious or those who want to look eco-conscious in order to be fashionable. The relatively high price suggests the eco-chic group: "it's easy being green" provokes a snort of amusement from those of us for whom it's not easy having to spend nearly three times as much as the usual cost of a laptop of that size - and 12" laptops were relatively expensive to begin with. One photo also shows it accompanied by what appears to be a leather case. A stylish leather case that will doubtless appeal to the fashion mob, but will also put off the substantial number of tree-huggers who are vegetarians. As a vegan I admit to being biased, but I think they're shooting themselves in the foot there, especially considering that bamboo fabric could be made into an exquisite and unusual laptop case.
Is there, as this article asks, "more show than substance to the claim of sustainable manufacturing"? The serious eco-credentials are hard to find, but I eventually dug them out here, and with some useful discussion in the comments here. The insides are apparently easy to recycle, it's lined with cardboard, it avoids using nasty chemicals, it looks like it should be easy to take apart for upgrading the components (to those who actually do such things; I'm still proud of having installed more RAM in my old laptop, and I had to borrow the right sort of mini-screwdriver from a neighbour to do so), and it has an LED which flashes green or red to show the level of power consumption. Personally I loathe having coloured lights blinking away on my computer, and was very glad when my current Toshiba made them all white instead, but hey, at least it indicates something useful. I'd prefer a taskbar or status bar gadget for that job myself, and come to that I'd love it if I could have an option for turning off all those little lights, for instance when watching a film. White is less obtrusive than orange or blue were, but most of the time I don't really want a light alerting to me to the fact that my computer is on and plugged in.
Grumbling aside, this appears to be a fairly stylish computer which has made a noble effort to go green. The reviews I've read don't say much since the laptop isn't out yet, but the comments have raised a number of pertinent queries. One commenter, who says that he works for a sustainable bamboo design company, asks,
How was the bamboo laminated? What was used to treat it? How durable can it be using "natural" additives? Is this really better for the environment after all considerations for where the bamboo was grown, shipped to, processed?
Several more have speculated about how hot this laptop will get, considering the insulating qualities of bamboo.
While this is nice, wood or bamboo are not good "heat movers" instead they keep the heat a lot more in, therefore asking the fans to work harder, therefore asking more energy...ah, making it worse than using the plastic itself. (which can be recycled). - Auberella
GCSE Physics was a long time ago, but it seems to me that this commenter has a point. Another site points out the flammability of wood. Asus must at least have made sure that the laptop won't go up in (atmosphere-polluting) smoke?!
That last link mentions other eco-computing issues, such as laptop AC adapters that don’t waste as much electricity. This is something I'd like to hear more about. You can buy a bamboo keyboard, monitor, mouse, flash drive or TV these days, but they look a little odd and I doubt they're going to revolutionise the computing industry and be single-handedly responsible for saving the planet. Still, it's a good start, and it has at least prodded me into looking at how to be greener in my computer use. Nigel's Ecostore has a variety of gadgets, none of which quite appeal enough. I'm not sure that recharging my batteries from my laptop instead of my mains-powered battery charger will actually save energy, and as for those Intellipanels that power off your peripherals when you turn off your laptop, my laptop is most often in the other room from the peripherals anyway and I prefer my existing arrangement of a surge protector with individually switched sockets. (Though it has made me pop through to check that I've unplugged my external hard drive. The yellow light is off since it's not plugged into the computer, but for all I know it's been eating up power regardless.) The niftiest-looking gadget is the solar laptop charger, and for that small but intrepid group of people who are using their laptop in outdoor conditions a lot, it must be a godsend. The one thing I might buy is the screen cleaning kit, although there must be a cheaper way of getting the fingermarks off my laptop screen.
Most of the products on that website have the same problem common to a great deal of "green" merchandise: they're outrageously expensive. People can be talked into something that's a little more expensive in the short-term if they can see that it will save them money in the long-term, for instance low-energy lightbulbs or replacing plastic carrier bags with reusable fabric ones, but most of them aren't going to spend a fortune on something that's supposedly a bit better for the environment unless it benefits them as well. The problem for manufacturers is that it's very difficult to cut prices on a product when it's still at the niche market stage, and the same applies for the product parts. Going for the luxury end of the laptop market means that the Ecobook is unlikely to lead the way in green computing as the EEE PC led the way in netbooks, although it does turn out to have a dedicated Green Asus website. I wonder how feasible it would be to create a laptop that truly was a revolution in green computing, had some gimmick such as the bamboo case that would instantly set it apart from the crowd, and yet was safely in the low to middle price range?
Who knows. The Ecobook looks like a lovely computer which I'd be honoured to take for a run but couldn't possibly afford to buy. Meanwhile, I've heard a rumour that there's a company somewhere in Scotland who will tailor-make disability equipment to your specifications, so I'll be going back to designing a overbed table which could not only fold flat but also store the laptop inside it. Cheap, attractive, sturdy yet lightweight, and environmentally sound, bamboo would be the ideal choice for the material.
They're both pretty, which Asus seems to be stressing a great deal, but while that's all very pleasant, laptops all look stylish these days and I have more pressing concerns than fashion. Size was my first consideration. For a secondary laptop, I need something small enough to use as a bedside laptop or put on my crowded sewing desk, and light enough that whisking it through to the kitchen to check a recipe doesn't take a moment's thought. Yet it also needs to be big enough that I can enlarge the text and still have a screen that makes sense, and have a keyboard large enough to type on without courting RSI. After my experiences with the 9" EEE PC 900, I think a 10" screen would be usable but a 12" screen would be better, although this would make it a smidgen more awkward for the rare occasions when I'd need to take it out of the flat. In the situations I've described above, robustness is also a useful quality, and here the S101 netbook has the edge since it has a solid-state drive. SSDs come on much more quickly, handy if you just want to check something or jot down a note, and are less fragile due to not having any moving parts, which would presumably mean that it's safe to move the laptop to another room without having to put it into hibernation first. However, the Ecobook is meant to have a relatively robust build as well, so it's not trailing as far behind on that point as it could.
It leaps ahead when it comes to the spec, naturally. Even running Vista as opposed to the more slimline XP sported by the S101, 4GB RAM and 320GB hard drive vs. 1GB and 16GB simply cannot be ignored. The S101 has just about enough storage that you could squeeze in your text files and a picture or two, but you couldn't have videos or music and you'd have to be careful about how much software you added. Admittedly I wouldn't bother editing images or watching films on such a small screen, I use online streaming for my audiobooks, and it's the age of YouTube, so I could probably manage fine, but I'll still take as much storage as I can get. They tell me that everything tends to run slower on these lower-spec netbooks, which could be frustrating if I were to have Firefox, the audiobook software, a game such as solitaire, and the word processor or e-mail client open at once, as I often do.
Vista vs. XP is a swings-and-roundabouts issue. XP does have many advantages and most people prefer it, although I must shamefacedly admit that I've got rather fond of Vista now that I'm used to its little quirks. I'm planning to put the laptop through its paces with regard to as much disability software and hardware as I can scrape up, as well as the general uses that everyone wants to know about, and disability software tends to be created by small companies or individuals who don't update it often. Quite a lot of it, therefore, is a great deal happier on XP, just as I've encountered several Firefox add-ons which throw a hissyfit when presented with Firefox 3. That's now, however. I'm not someone who replaces her computer every year, I need to look to the future. Even with XP being official for netbooks now, it can't be denied that it's being phased out and everything is moving Vista-wards.
Both computers have three USB ports, just enough to run the wireless keyboard, mouse and headphones, so they're neck and neck there. The S101 doesn't have a DVD drive, which is perfectly sensible on a netbook but would mean having to buy an external DVD drive if I wanted to install my printer software or what have you. Some netbook manufacturers are including an external DVD drive with the netbook, which for the higher priced models such as the S101 I would consider a wise move. Plus the speakers are probably better on the Ecobook as well. The Ecobook won.
The Ecobook
I felt a visceral tug when I saw this laptop. Part of me took one look and joyously squealed, "Trees!" Like Ursula Le Guin, who prides herself on being "the most arboreal science fiction writer", I have a slight obsession with trees. My desktop backgrounds are always botanical, my quilts are becoming more and more so, and I could tell you every kind of wood that I have in my flat, from the rosewood Bluthner piano to the beech doorknobs on my kitchen units to the cheapie untreated pine bookcases in the hall. Anything which evokes trees is a instant hook-in for me.
I don't spend all my time metaphorically swinging about in the branches, though, so let's look at this a mite more analytically. The first thing that will strike anyone about this laptop is undoubtedly the visuals. We've had years of variations on the same look for laptops. You could have any colour of the rainbow, although grey, black or white would return somewhere in the laptop, so the outside colour would have to tone well with that. There were possibilities for stripes or sparkles, gloss or satin finish, metallic edgings or touchpad buttons, but at the end of the day it would always be plastic. This baby is covered in bamboo, with all the beauty and character of natural wood, immediately setting it apart from any laptop that has come before. For some reason Asus appears to have teamed this with a keyboard in grey, a colour that is unlikely to complement the warm honey tones of bamboo, but the prototype photos vary wildly and don't show the inside of the laptop well, so perhaps it will look better in reality. They seem to have picked up on the traditional use of bamboo in Japanese art, which should do good things for the design in terms of clean lines and elegance.
Bamboo is a plant with many useful applications. As a wood, it's beautiful to look at, tough yet lightweight, and can be used for anything from chopping boards and fruit bowls to flooring and scaffolding. It can also be made into a fabric, which supposedly has wondrous anti-bacterial and quick-drying properties along with a silky texture. I have some bamboo facecloths, which lived up to the hype, and clothing, which mostly didn't. Quilters who've tried it tell me that it makes a fabulous quilt wadding, and knitters also rave about bamboo yarn. While browsing bamboo clothing online a while ago, I found some ridiculously overpriced bamboo knickers where the website informed you that, "BAMBOO IS BREATHABLE, BIODEGRADABLE AND DOES NOT NEED LOTS OF PESTICIDES AND FERTLISERS. BAMBOO CAN GROW BY 3 METRES OVERNIGHT." As
mirrorshard remarked, there are many things one wants knickers to do, but growing by 3 metres overnight isn't one of them.The real question, of course, is how green this laptop actually is, and whether Asus are aiming for the truly eco-conscious or those who want to look eco-conscious in order to be fashionable. The relatively high price suggests the eco-chic group: "it's easy being green" provokes a snort of amusement from those of us for whom it's not easy having to spend nearly three times as much as the usual cost of a laptop of that size - and 12" laptops were relatively expensive to begin with. One photo also shows it accompanied by what appears to be a leather case. A stylish leather case that will doubtless appeal to the fashion mob, but will also put off the substantial number of tree-huggers who are vegetarians. As a vegan I admit to being biased, but I think they're shooting themselves in the foot there, especially considering that bamboo fabric could be made into an exquisite and unusual laptop case.
Is there, as this article asks, "more show than substance to the claim of sustainable manufacturing"? The serious eco-credentials are hard to find, but I eventually dug them out here, and with some useful discussion in the comments here. The insides are apparently easy to recycle, it's lined with cardboard, it avoids using nasty chemicals, it looks like it should be easy to take apart for upgrading the components (to those who actually do such things; I'm still proud of having installed more RAM in my old laptop, and I had to borrow the right sort of mini-screwdriver from a neighbour to do so), and it has an LED which flashes green or red to show the level of power consumption. Personally I loathe having coloured lights blinking away on my computer, and was very glad when my current Toshiba made them all white instead, but hey, at least it indicates something useful. I'd prefer a taskbar or status bar gadget for that job myself, and come to that I'd love it if I could have an option for turning off all those little lights, for instance when watching a film. White is less obtrusive than orange or blue were, but most of the time I don't really want a light alerting to me to the fact that my computer is on and plugged in.
Grumbling aside, this appears to be a fairly stylish computer which has made a noble effort to go green. The reviews I've read don't say much since the laptop isn't out yet, but the comments have raised a number of pertinent queries. One commenter, who says that he works for a sustainable bamboo design company, asks,
How was the bamboo laminated? What was used to treat it? How durable can it be using "natural" additives? Is this really better for the environment after all considerations for where the bamboo was grown, shipped to, processed?
Several more have speculated about how hot this laptop will get, considering the insulating qualities of bamboo.
While this is nice, wood or bamboo are not good "heat movers" instead they keep the heat a lot more in, therefore asking the fans to work harder, therefore asking more energy...ah, making it worse than using the plastic itself. (which can be recycled). - Auberella
GCSE Physics was a long time ago, but it seems to me that this commenter has a point. Another site points out the flammability of wood. Asus must at least have made sure that the laptop won't go up in (atmosphere-polluting) smoke?!
That last link mentions other eco-computing issues, such as laptop AC adapters that don’t waste as much electricity. This is something I'd like to hear more about. You can buy a bamboo keyboard, monitor, mouse, flash drive or TV these days, but they look a little odd and I doubt they're going to revolutionise the computing industry and be single-handedly responsible for saving the planet. Still, it's a good start, and it has at least prodded me into looking at how to be greener in my computer use. Nigel's Ecostore has a variety of gadgets, none of which quite appeal enough. I'm not sure that recharging my batteries from my laptop instead of my mains-powered battery charger will actually save energy, and as for those Intellipanels that power off your peripherals when you turn off your laptop, my laptop is most often in the other room from the peripherals anyway and I prefer my existing arrangement of a surge protector with individually switched sockets. (Though it has made me pop through to check that I've unplugged my external hard drive. The yellow light is off since it's not plugged into the computer, but for all I know it's been eating up power regardless.) The niftiest-looking gadget is the solar laptop charger, and for that small but intrepid group of people who are using their laptop in outdoor conditions a lot, it must be a godsend. The one thing I might buy is the screen cleaning kit, although there must be a cheaper way of getting the fingermarks off my laptop screen.
Most of the products on that website have the same problem common to a great deal of "green" merchandise: they're outrageously expensive. People can be talked into something that's a little more expensive in the short-term if they can see that it will save them money in the long-term, for instance low-energy lightbulbs or replacing plastic carrier bags with reusable fabric ones, but most of them aren't going to spend a fortune on something that's supposedly a bit better for the environment unless it benefits them as well. The problem for manufacturers is that it's very difficult to cut prices on a product when it's still at the niche market stage, and the same applies for the product parts. Going for the luxury end of the laptop market means that the Ecobook is unlikely to lead the way in green computing as the EEE PC led the way in netbooks, although it does turn out to have a dedicated Green Asus website. I wonder how feasible it would be to create a laptop that truly was a revolution in green computing, had some gimmick such as the bamboo case that would instantly set it apart from the crowd, and yet was safely in the low to middle price range?
Who knows. The Ecobook looks like a lovely computer which I'd be honoured to take for a run but couldn't possibly afford to buy. Meanwhile, I've heard a rumour that there's a company somewhere in Scotland who will tailor-make disability equipment to your specifications, so I'll be going back to designing a overbed table which could not only fold flat but also store the laptop inside it. Cheap, attractive, sturdy yet lightweight, and environmentally sound, bamboo would be the ideal choice for the material.
