Credit: waleg.com

Green seems to be the talk of the town these days. Everywhere you go you are going to hear about the so-called green movement, and how companies are trying to help save the earth by developing environment-friendly products. Sony is no different. The company has announced a brand new netbook that is made out of recycled material, and the CO2 emissions to manufacture this device have been reduced by 10% (in comparison to other netbooks).

Sony VAIO W Eco netbook has a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450 CPU, Intel GMA 3150 graphics, 1GB DDR2 memory, and can give you 8 hours of battery life per charge. So the device is somewhat more energy efficient than previous Sony netbooks. It’s great that a company such as Sony is thinking of the environment. The company has also been involved in the e-book market, so it is serious in its green mission. However, I am not sure the device is worth $479. Sony is a premium brand, and people expect to pay more for a VAIO machine. At the same time, I am not sure you can use the “green” excuse to sell products for much more than they are worth.

The problem here is not Sony or its approach. But the Eco line seems to be more of a marketing scheme. There are more energy efficient netbooks on the market with similar or better specs. ASUS’ latest netbooks get over 10 hours of battery life. So while it’s exciting to see Sony push more eco-friendly products, they are not as green as they could be.

Your take: would you invest in Eco netbooks knowing that you may have to pay significantly more than you would for a regular netbook?