What is that you look for in a notebook? Performance, features, looks? And if you get all this for an affordable price, nothing like it. But recently, green has also become a buzzword and manufacturers are trying to cash-in on this latest trend.

Asus recently introduced their 'green' notebook, the U6V Bamboo which is more bio-degradeable than conventional metal bodied notebooks. A large part of the outer shell is made of bamboo and contrary to what you may think, it's all natural.

Coming to the looks, the bamboo finish lends it a mixture of woody brown and silver colors. The lid and the palm rests including the touchpad are made from bamboo, whereas the rest is conventional metal. The U6V has been put together quite well with no creaks or rough edges visible anywhere.

It is loaded with all the connectivity options you need as well. There are 3 USB ports, an E-sata port as well as HDMI out. The touchpad and the keyboard feel quite solid and the LED backlit screen displays vivid colors.

The U6V is powered by the Intel Core2 Duo P8400 processor which clocks at 2.27 GHz and when teamed with 4 GB RAM, offers superb performance. The PC Mark score of 5031 asserts that Windows Vista Home Premium and applications will run mighty fine. The Windows Experience Index gave it a score of 5.2 for the processor, 5.9 for the RAM and 5.3 for the hard drive-that's great for a small and lightweight notebook. Gaming also falls in the domain of the U6V which comes loaded with the Nvidia GeForce 9300M GS graphics card. The 3D Mark score of 1615 indicates decent performance can be extracted if you play games at low or medium settings.

The person on the move is extremely concerned about battery life and that can be a bit of a problem when the battery is powering such a powerful configuration. However, there are multiple ways of actually getting more juice from the 6- cell battery. Asus has installed the Power4 Gear settings which can be adjusted for performance or battery or taking a middle path. We extracted 2 hours and 43 minutes at the High Performance setting and 3 hours 24 minutes in the battery saving mode. While acceptable, the battery life is nowhere near what you'll get from Asus's newer EeePC range. You have to decide whether it's power you want or long battery life. At the current price, it is quite expensive, but there's nothing else quite like it in the market. If you want more power, you can go for the much larger, 17-inch Dell XPS M1730 for Rs 120k.

Asus Bamboo U6V Rs 1,10,000	Performance Coolness
Pros Performance, exclusivity Cons Overpriced Sold by Asus India, www.in.asus.com	Specs 12.1-inch screen, Intel Core2 Duo P8400 @ 2.27 GHz, 4 GB RAM, 320 GB HDD, Nvidia GeForce 9300M GS, 3 USB, E-sata, HDMI, Windows Vista Home Premium, WiFi, Bluetooth, 1.7 kg Verdict