Sony Vaio W-series Eco Edition early review: Green is the new meh

When Crave awoke this morning, our first thought (after 'whose bed is this?') was: 'We could really use a new eco-friendly netbook'. Thankfully, our prayers were answered when Sony telephoned to invite us to the launch of its W-series Eco Edition miniature laptop.

According to Sony's marketing bods, this machine can dramatically reduce your computing carbon footprint. That's because nearly 80 per cent of its plastic parts -- including the palm rest and top and bottom covers -- are made of PC/ABS resin and polycarbonates recovered from the manufacture of CDs and DVDs. Sony has also been kind enough to ditch a paper manual in favour of an electronic one. It claims this step achieves roughly a 35 per cent reduction in printed user documents compared with its other laptops.

Impressively, Sony's done away with the traditional cardboard box that laptops usually ship in. Instead, it's transporting the W-series Eco Edition in a stylish brown laptop bag, whose outer fabric is manufactured using recycled PET bottles. Now if that doesn't get your environmentally sustainable hippy juices flowing, you probably need to get your dreadlocks adjusted.

The W-series Eco Edition will use the new Intel Atom N450 CPU, 1GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive and Windows 7 Starter. It will come with 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and a webcam.

During our brief hands-on, we thought this machine looked pretty decent. It's essentially an ordinary netbook with a green colour scheme and lofty claims of being environmentally sound. The keyboard felt rather small and ropey compared with those on netbooks such as the models in the Eee PC 1000 Seashell series, and you only get two USB ports, but, that aside, it's a machine we'd definitely consider owning.

The W-series Eco Edition is available now for around £350 from Sony's Web site. You can take a look at it in greater detail by hitting the 'Continue' button below, which will whisk you to our photo gallery.