On 18th June Fujitsu announced the release of its new S6410 laptop with 'eco' attributes!
At only 1.6kgs (for the T7500 processor model) this lightweight laptop has a standard 3 hour battery - this benchmark was set by the BAPCO MobileMark 2005 'productivity workload' model. As Fujitsu note in the 'small text', the actual battery time varies depending on "screen brightness, sound volume settings, running applications, connected peripherals, power management settings, battery conditioning, and other customer preferences. Built-in bay device or hard drive usage may also have a significant impact on battery life". This is fairly standard of any laptop.
However for the eco conscious, most interesting in this laptop is the fact it is 'mercury free' and RoHS compliant. 'Mercury free' products can be labelled such when they contain no more than 0.1% mercury by weight in 'homogenous materials'. The 'homogenous materials' statement is explained really well on the site http://www.pb-free.info/jargon.htm#homogeneous - essentially it means the total concentration in one type of material e.g. plastic. So in this case the total amount of mercury in the plastic of the laptop amounts to no more than 0.1%. And the total amount of mercury in the metal of this laptop is less than 0.1%, and so on.
RoHS compliant products are labelled as such when they comply with the 2003 European Union (EU) Directive on the Restrictive of the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment (RoHS). Watch out for a future article on this site describing RoHS, but in the meantime checkout the EU document at http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2003:037:0019:0023:EN:PDF.
