Ditto for the new MacBook Air, which weighs 2.96 pounds, or the metal-clad ASUS Zenbook Prime UX31A, which comes in at 2.86 pounds.

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Inside a metal-clad tower at the gas technology Institute in suburban Des Plaines, Ill. sits a narrow, 40-foot steel tube bristling with instrumentation ports and pressurized pipes.

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Steve Jobs is famous for hitting the computer market with stuff it didn't see coming, whether it's a smart phone with no buttons or a metal-clad home computer.

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Architect Sir Norman Foster elegantly combined a refurbished British-era military structure surrounded by manicured green lawns with curved, metal-clad modern hotel buildings and villas that tumble down a hillside to the South China Sea.

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They poured concrete, lugged bricks and cement and did metal work, with some clad in gloves and construction helmets.

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Metal has done its best to change with the times the so-called hair bands, spandex-clad pretty boys, in the 1980s, even rap-metal in the '90s.

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