Crave

The Wacom Bamboo Pen & Touch

(Credit: Wacom)

Wacom's pressure-sensitive tablets have already been pretty great at what they do, but they've added a simple and appreciated wrinkle for Windows 7 and Mac OSX multitouch addicts: their new pads now double as giant multitouch pads, too.

Available in a range of sizes and functions, Wacom's Bamboo lineup has pads that are touch-only, as well as touch/pen combo pads. In our opinion, the combo is really the only way to go--Wacom's wireless pressure-sensitive pen is worth the tiny bit of extra investment, and is nearly good enough to drive would-be artists right over the edge into art dabbling themselves.

The larger Bamboo Fun ($199)

(Credit: Wacom)

$69 will get you either a small black Touch pad or a small black Pen pad, but the Pen & Touch combo costs $99. A silver-colored Bamboo Craft edition comes with extra software bundles for crafting and scrapbooking. Meanwhile, at the top end of the line, the $199 Bamboo Fun is larger and has more room for its pen/touch interface. The silver Bamboo editions include Corel Essentials 4 as well as Nik Color Efex Pro 3.0 WE3 and Photoshop Elements 7, while the lower-cost pads include various combinations of one or two of these programs.

Read our review of the Bamboo Fun Pen & Touch.

John DeVore, a couple of cool cats, and a bunch of unfinished speaker cabinets.

(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)

Devore Fidelity, founded by president and chief designer John DeVore in 2000, builds state-of-the-art speakers in the Brooklyn borough of New York.

DeVore is one of the few speaker designers I've met who worked as a high-end audio salesman, so he can draw upon first-hand knowledge of what buyers really want. He's also listened to the very best stuff out there, and learned that components that measure well and sound impressive at first don't always sound great over the long run.

I've known John for a long time, and when he first decided to get into the speaker business, I was skeptical. Over the years, I've seen many try to get into the game--and almost all go bust. Designing a great speaker is one thing; running a business and getting your stuff out to market are huge challenges.

John not only succeeded where others failed, but he didn't cut corners. I visited his Brooklyn factory last week and was mightily impressed by his workers' craftsmanship. The speakers' wood veneers, made of walnut and cherry, are gorgeous.

Devore Fidelity is still a small operation, selling about 400 pairs of speakers a year. John puts a higher value on quality than on quantity, and his customers appreciate that. Even in these tough times, sales are holding steady.

John played his latest design, the 3XL, a two-way bookshelf model with a solid bamboo wood cabinet, in the factory's large listening room. The sound was vivid and musically engaging, and considering the speaker's modest dimensions, it produced very decent bass.

DeVore Fidelity speaker prices now start around $2,000 a pair. I reviewed the DeVore Gibbon 7.1 speaker for Home Entertainment magazine in 2004.

Bamboo laptops...why not?

(Credit: CNET)

We first heard about this bamboo-covered laptop from Asus several months ago, and with that company's history of leather wrist rests and automotive-branded lids, it certainly fits right in with the creative Asus designs we're used to seeing. Now, at long last, we've finally gotten a chance to get a look in person, as Asus was in New York last week, showing off a handful of new systems (including the N10 "high-end" Netbook).

The bamboo laptops are built around two existing Asus models, the 12-inch U6S (which we reviewed very positively earlier in the year), and the 11-inch U2E.

SimpleTech's new (Re)Drive is made partially of bamboo and supports only USB 2.0.

(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET Networks)

I've recently seen quite a few devices with an environmentally conscientious design. These devices generally consume less power and are made of recycled, non-toxic materials. Today, though, I got introduced a device that put "green" in a different light.

SimpleTech has gone far and long to make their its new (Re)Drive external hard drive as eco-friendly as possible. The device comes in a package that contains just the essentials: the drive plus its power and USB cables. The cables are are taped to a side of the box. There's no other paper or plastic or any unnecessary packaging materials, as normally found in most other packages. Even the Quick Install Guide is printed on the inside of of the box.

Being environmentally conscientious, SimpleTech has the (Re)Drive's Quick Install Guide printed on the inside of the box.

(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET Networks)

Now comes the drive. It's partially made of...bamboo! It's true--the top and the bottom of the drive are two pieces of unpainted bamboo strips that smell and feel as if they just left the lumber mill. It's interesting that SimpleTech chose bamboo as the materials for the (Re)Drive. I am from Asia and know very well how bamboo is ubiquitous there and is the easiest plant to grow.

The drive, of course, has metal parts. Its sides are made of recycled aluminum that also work as a heat-sink that dissipates heat generated by the internal hard drive. The aluminum casing also helps cool the drive without using fans, which would use more power. The drive doesn't come with a power switch, but it has a mechanism that turns the drive on and off according to the usage. I don't know how this will work out in real life use and testing, but this seems a good solution to save energy. The (Re)Drive's power adapter is also Energy Star certified.

The (Re)Drive comes with TurboHDDUSB software that allows for significantly improving USB 2.0 throughput performance.

(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET Networks)

As an external hard drive, the (Re)Drive offers 500GB of storage and a USB 2.0 connection. There's no FireWire or eSATA support. However, it comes with a software driver that allows the USB 2.0 connection to work in Turbo mode, which promises to increase the throughput speed significantly.

The drive is estimated to cost about $160, which translate into about 30 cents per Gigabite -- a relatively good deal. Other than the Turbo software driver, similar to the Back Cherry, the (Re)Drive ships with Fabrick Local Backup software as a basic back up solution and it includes 2GB of free online backup storage from Fabrik Ultimate. The Backup service costs about $5 per month month for unlimited online storage space.

I will have to see via testing about the drive's performance and features, so check back for our in-depth review at CNET.com. However, just from its looks, I feel quite tempted to use the (Re)Drive as a cheese serving board. It looks like it will go well with a piece of Stilton blue cheese.

(Credit: Akihabara News)

Bamboo is so yesterday. While the eco-quotient of that reputedly sustainable material remains the subject of some debate, a few manufacturers are headed for other forested regions to make their wares with finishings of the wood-grass variety.

Fujitsu went with cedar in a laptop showcased earlier this month in Milan, and now Cowon is gracing the Korean market with a new version of its N3 all-in-one gadget in what appears to be burl walnut, as Akihabara News reports. Other than the sylvan exterior, this portable navigation device is pretty much the same as the original model with a 7-inch touch screen, GPS features, and audio and video functions. Our prediction: a future model for the dashboard.

(Credit: Crave UK)

Just after Michael Dell unveiled a bamboo PC as his Earth Day gift, Asus is reportedly making plans to release its own laptops made with the sustainable material this summer. The first models from the Taiwanese company will be notebooks with 12- and 11-inch screens for about $1,650, according to Boing Boing, citing reports from publications in Asia.

We have just one thing to say: Finally. We've been teased by photos of these computers for more than a year, only to see their models multiply with no word of ever coming to market. In fact, the company has moved on to showing off concepts of desktop versions. We're guessing that it'll be Earth Day 2009 before we hear anything concrete about those.

(Credit: Impress)

Recent concerns over "greenwashing" probably had nothing to do with it, but Fujitsu has apparently decided to skip the ever-popular bamboo in its version of the wooden laptop. Instead the Japanese company has gone with cedar, the lumber known around the world for saunas and mothballs.

Bearing the inspired name of "WoodShell," Fujitsu's laptop was displayed at the Salone Internazionale Del Mobile furniture exhibition in Milan, according to Gizmodo. There are no details on specs, however, or whether it responds to Pledge. We'll take a wild guess that this is a novelty item more than anything else at this point, so we're sticking with our bet on Asus in the department of wood-grass materials.

Bamboo buyer beware, says Kelly LaPlante.

"This is one of the biggest areas for greenwashing," she told me during a tour of a suite she redesigned on behalf of Lexus at San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel. (As part of a marketing campaign, Lexus is sprucing up hotel suites in San Francisco and Washington, D.C, The Fairmont one costs $869 a night, but you get to use a Lexus hybrid V8 while you're there.)

A coffee table from Lexus

(Credit: Michael Kanellos/CNET Networks)

A lot of companies offer bamboo flooring and panel so they can sell a green product, but many of them also use toxic adhesives and other chemicals that take away the advantages of using bamboo. Bamboo grows fast and needs little fertilizer, making it a relatively green building product.

Some also grow it in distant places and truck it in, eliminating further environmental advantages. You've got to dig into the suppliers to figure out if you're buying green. Later this year, she will set up a site that rates various building suppliers on how green they really are. It should be good reading.

Other remodeling tips from LaPlante:

• Recycle as much as possible. She recently remodeled three cottages in Venice, Calif. They reused drywall and so much material that they didn't even need a dumpster out front. The less stuff that ends up in the land fill, the better.

"When you demolish something, are you demolishing or carefully removing," she said.

That footstool/table you see in the picture is an example of recycling. It's made out of leather found in old Lexuses.

• Green is not necessarily a statement. You can consciously pick green materials, but it doesn't have to be a theme. In fact, self-conscious green will likely look dated in the future.

"We try to make things that don't look like green design," she said.

(Credit: MobileWhack)

Bamboo has made its way into everything from mice to TVs, but for some reason it seems to have missed mobile phones. But MobileWhack has found a concept from this year's Greener Gadgets Design Competition that wants to bring everyone's favorite eco-material to the handset.

Shockingly named "Bamboo," the proposed phone would compete with the likes of Nokia's "Remade" concept in what could eventually prove to be a major eco-trend in the global marketplace. Despite its name, the handset would be made of corn and other natural materials as well for safe, degradeable disposal.

And how does it charge? By hand-crank, of course. Sorry, hemp lovers.