October 3, 2006 - Candace Lombardi

Wood Computers for the Living Room

As movie and TV downloads become more popular and the hard drive replaces the DVD drawer, people may want a nicer look, and a lot more storage.

Suissa, a new company featured at the Canadian design conference IIDEX/NeoCon, launched a line of wood-encased computers on Monday, Slashdot reported.

"With the integration of computers into our living environment, people are craving something more human. They relate to natural materials more readily than to the cold sterility of plastic or metal," said Howard Suissa, the company's founder, in a statement.

While Suissa is probably right about people preferring wood to plastic, most people don't have the funds to buy his burled beauties.

Sure, people can choose from a variety of exotic wood combinations including maple/zebrawood, walnut/zebrawood, maple/goncalo alves, lacewood/leopardwood and maple/padauk. Prices start, however, at $6,150 (£3,285) and go up to $35,000 (£18,700) for a customised server capable of storing 1,500 DVD-quality movies.

The Yasuko (pronounced yas-ko), for example, is priced at $6,890 (£3,680). The computer is a DVD player/burner and comes with three Seagate Barracuda 500GB hard drives. The computer... er server, can be customised to fit up to five hard drives. It also has a liquid cooling tank and special airflow chamber to prevent overheating.

The computers seem geared toward the flattie set, who don't mind shelling out big bucks for their swinging bachelor pad media room.

The rest of us will just have to get by with a networked terabyte server in the basement.