Laptops in green technology

It's surprising for me to talk about technology; I think I was influenced by the talk and use of laptops in my class.

Our class is a "guinea pig" for the Future School Programme, in which students will rely more on technology such as laptops, e-portals such as wikispaces or wetpaint sites and the internet to learn. In other words, we are being used to test whether the usage of advanced technology will prove to be successful in our school. Better to be safe than to be sorry, isn't it. So far, not many of us are bringing laptops to school. In a class of 28 students, about 9-10 of us have our own laptops. I guess most of us will have laptops around the Chinese New Year season due to the laptop subsidy programme.

But the thing is, not all laptops are environmentally safe. Several laptops do contain hazardous chemicals such as cadmium, lead and mercury. Just for interest's sake, I will introduce two fundamentally different, interesting and eco-friendly (in their own unique ways) computers on the market.

Macbook Air

Features

-mercury and arsenic free
-highly recyclable

-thin and light; portable

-5 hour battery life

-120GB hard drive, a lot of storage space

-not very affordable for the mainstream (1499 USD)

My opinion: Fusing technology, creativity and consideration for the environment is not what one sees everyday. This laptop is great in both technical and design aspects (design is Apple's specialty after all). Unfortunately in a green revolution of laptops the Macbook Air would not be as appealing to the mainstream as compared to cheaper yet almost as efficient laptops due to its higher-end cost.

XO-1 laptop (OLPC)

Features
-energy efficient
-light (about 1.5kg) and small, portable
-durable
-no toxic heavy metals
-very cheap, being less than $200

My opinion: OLPC's cause is more than commendable-they seek to provide poor children with low-cost yet stylish and efficient laptops. The organization is a non-profit one, and it can be seen that they really have the needy children in mind when they designed the notebook-it is child-safe, having rounded edges and being light enough for young children to carry. The laptop also has the programme SUGAR which is targeted at young, growing children.

However, the XO-1 laptop is definitely not as powerful as notebooks such as Macbook Air and mainly appeals to children without considering adult users (designed for children). All the same the XO laptops have quite a lot of potential both in aiding humanity and saving our environment.

It is amazing to see how technology has made such progress in a mere few decades, and thankfully several major international companies do consider the environment while making their products. Green technology is definitely a key to our future success, and introducing it in the form of laptops, devices most people of the younger generation use in this computer-age, would definitely jumpstart a green technology revolution that will reverse our planet's precarious situation. I wonder what green computers of the future will be like?