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CES: Fujitsu Shows A Corn PC And Concept Designs With Digital Paper

One system -- the Corn PC (a notebook) -- falls into the "green" category because of the techniques used to manufacture its case. According to Fujitsu's senior director of mobile product marketing Paul Moore:

We've found a way to extract plastics from organic materials like corn. You can use rice, you can use potatoes, you can use sweet potatoes, you can use castor -- anything that has a starch. We take that and we do a 50/50 blend between petroleum-based plastics and the organics-based plastics and we come up with a casing for computers that's just as durable and rugged (and feels and smells) just like a regular plastic PC. Only, the reliance on petroleum-based plastic is only 50%.

The Corn PC is actually available right now in Japan. The main reason it isn't available domestically in the U.S., says Moore, is that it doesn't hold up to American flame-retardant standards (actually, requirements).

On the purely conceptual front (products that aren't available anywhere yet) were two mock-ups that Moore says are merely ideas that we may one day see factored into some Fujitsu product. Both are built around the viability of digital paper. One was the Fabric PC (or Fab PC). As you can see in the video, the Fab PC's keyboard opens in such a way that a 12-inch screen becomes a 17-inch screen because of how flexible the digital paper is.

Said Moore:

When you can flex the display, it opens up all kinds of possibilities.

Also shown in the video is another digital paper-based product -- this one called the "Clerk Browser." It's touch-sensitive digital paper that wraps around your wrist and will respond when a store clerk taps the paper to retrieve information about products and inventory in a store. With wireless connectivity enabled, an order could even be processed for pick-up. What, I wonder, are the applications of such an innovation to health care?

Again, there are no specific product plans for these products, but it is likely that the ideas represented by them will one day work their way into some final product from Fujitsu.

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