ASUS Shows Off Gold, Bamboo Notebooks

Last night, we attended the Pepcom Holiday Spectacular event here in New York and, while we didn’t see many exciting new products, we were amused by a couple of things we saw at the ASUS booth. The first was a gold — not actual gold, but gold-colored — laptop prototype. Apparently, this is just a prototype and ASUS tells us they have no plans to release anything that looks like this to the market. We think that’s a good thing, because the finish reminds us either of a bowling ball or a 1978 Firebrid Trans Am, but not in a good way. The second interesting notebook we spotted was a bamboo version of the ASUS U2E 11-inch notebook. We had already seen the 12-inch bamboo ASUS U6V, which is even available for pre-order on Amazon.com, but were still impressed with the looks of the U2E because of the way the sleek black keyboard compliments the bamboo. We hold the original, leather U2E in high regard, having given it fours stars in our review last April, so the bamboo version looks like it’s going to be a real winner. ASUS reps had no word yet on pricing, though they told us it was probably coming stateside later this fall.