The Sony Vaio W has never been one of the cheapest netbooks. Initially launched with a $499 price tag and a 1366 x 768 pixel HD display, Sony was clearly trying to set the Vaio W apart from the crowd. Now the company has found a new way to do it, by introducing the Sony Vaio W Eco Edition which has a plastic case with about 20% of the material coming from recycled CDs.

The netbook also comes with a carrying case made from recycled PET bottles. You also don’t get a paper manual in the box. Instead, the manual is stored digitally.

The new model still has a 10.1 inch 1366 x 768 pixel display. It has an Intel Atom N450 CPU, 250GB hard drive, 1GB of RAM, and runs Windows 7 Starter Edition. It weighs 2.9 pounds and gets about 7 hours of run time. And either recycled plastic is cheap, or Sony has found another way to bring costs down, because the Sony Vaio W Eco Edition will retail for $480. That’s still a lot of money for a 10 inch netbook, but it’s a bit cheaper than the original Vaio W.

Update: Now with 100% more press release. You can find more pictures after the break.

via Gizmodo and Laptop Magazine

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