the wooden computer

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Thursday, August 09, 2012

Would you use a wooden PC?

This one has been hailed as one of the most environmentally friendly computers on the planet and most parts can be recycled.

It has a touch screen, a wooden frame and the energy-sapping fan has been replaced with a system of copper piping, to create ‘heat sinks’, so it's quieter.

All this means the carbon footprint is 70 per cent less than a typical PC, while 98 per cent of the parts can be recycled.

Designed by German scientists, the iameco has won an EU Ecolabel ‘Flower’ award, the first computer of its kind to do so.

Boffins at Berlin’s Fraunhofer Institute IZM came up with the design which will go into production at Dublin-based company MicroPro, which has been incorporating wood into its technology products for years.

A fully featured desktop PC and screen is built into the wooden casing

The PC has a very low energy consumption over the entire lifecycle of the unit, starting from production, through its working life,to ultimate recycling.

The next step for the German-Irish collaboration is to come up with a wooden-framed environmentally-friendly notebook.