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Asus will ship its leather-clad laptop, the S6F, next month, the manufacturer revealed this week. It hopes well-to-do punters will be happy to fork out almost £1,700 for a compact computer with an 11in display and a low-voltage Intel dual-core processor.

The S6F's wrist-rest and lid are both covered in genuine cowhide, tanned and coloured in either Camel or Dark Chocolate - light or dark brown, for the rest of us - and then hand-pressed onto the luxury laptop. Asus said its engineers have ensure the leather will age gracefully.

The spec may not, of course, so it's reassuring that the S6F starts out with a reasonably decent feature list. Its processor is a 1.6GHz low-voltage dual-core Core Duo L2400 backed by 1GB of DDR 2 SDRAM, a 100GB hard drive and a multi-format DVD writer. It uses Intel's latest Centrio chipset, the 945GM, which has on-board graphics to power the 11in WXGA anti-glare screen.

The S6F's 1.4kg chassis also includes 802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi and Gigabit Ethernet. Asus said the machine ships with two batteries - one twice the capacity of the other - so users can choose themselves how best to balance weight and operational duration.

The notebook comes with a global two-year warranty and Asus' zero bright dot policy, which invokes a replacement screen if the bundled unit shows just a single bad pixel.

Asus said the S6F will be offered by a number of IT retailers, along with posh peoples' stores Harrods and Selfridges. ®

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