Mousie Shmousie

[The Meromorph]

ANd then there's this:
http://www.amazon.com/Impecca-KBB500C-Bamboo-Handcrafted-Keyboard/dp/B003VOOOKY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1321298148&sr=8-1
I am so-o-o- tempted

[Aggie]

Good price, actually.  I'm sure I could build one, but not for retail at that price.   

Hmm...  I wonder whether there's much of a market for high-end wood-jacketed laptops?

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Laptops have relatively low tolerance for high temperatures, and wood might not be the best housing for one, in fact I will get out of character and say that Apple* was onto something when they made the housing of some of their laptops of aluminium which helped with the internal thermals.

*they also make backlit keyboards on their laptops which should be standard on all of them, even I have to admit they do certain things right.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

I've seen wooden laptops-- basically, a classic plastic-case 'top gutted and the guts moved to a handmade wooden one.

The one I saw was of the steampunk style, with brass accent pieces.   The keys were repurposed from an old 1890's style classic typewriter.  Was way cool, but was too heavy to be portable.  The maker did not care about that, just wanted a steampunk look (handcrafted brass, wood).

He had taken care with the cooling passageways, imitating those of the laptop.

[pieces o nine]

very kewl, MB!

[Aggie]

A very thin wood veneer over aluminum might do the trick, with some exposed metal on the edges to help a bit. There wouldn't be much need to use wood on the bottom where most of the cooling happens; mostly you'd just want the screen case and the area around the keyboard to be wood.

For durability, one could strip-build and finish with fibreglass, like a kayak.