Asus’ small Eee PC was a rather unexpected success for the hardware vendor – an expansion of the Eee brand was only natural. The Eee Pc 901 followed, with a bigger screen and the option of having Windows XP pre-installed. Now, Asus is moving into the desktop PC market with their Eee Box, an Intel Atom-powered mini-desktop PC, showed off at Computex.El Reg reports that the Eee Box on display in Taipei at Computex this week had a 1.6Ghz Intel Atom processor, 1GB of DDR2 memory, 80GB hard drive, gigabit ethernet, 802.11n Wi-Fi, and optional Bluetooth, all bound together by Intel’s 945GSE integrated chipset. It will have a DVI port, multiple USB ports, and some reports say it has a TV tuner link.
The device looks rather pretty, if you ask me, but I hope you can remove the base. The wooden look won’t be to everyone’s liking, but as long as I can opt for a much darker shade of wood, I kind of like it. El Reg reports it will go on sale – at least in Asia – starting July, for EUR 209.
Mac mini look out!
That machine is really slick!
Except the Mac Mini has an optical drive…
I’d say the lack of an optical drive in a formfactor like this is going to be a big turn off for me.
Edit: Also, why not add a couple extra USB ports on the back?
Edited 2008-06-06 20:20 UTC
re optical drive. – Yeah, that would be my initial reflex, too. Then again: If I come to think of it, I haven’t used my drive in month. Only recently I got a tad bored and burned a couple Live-CDs, or else, my Battlefield 2 CD just sits in their waiting for action. (Even for back-up, I have a few HDs and an Iomega Rev drive).
Now, that is two applications for a drive that do not apply to this sort of machine – it is neither a Linux test bed nor a gaming rig.
Finally, the days of CD installs for software are over for the most part. I can’t thing of anything the average surfing, letter typing user would want to install that comes on a disc and not (at least) also as a download.
Trust me, this thing does not need a drive. If I wanted to install Linux, I’d use a USB Floppy and pull SuSE straight off the FTP on to that baby.
Oh and don’t tell me you want to watch DVDs on this because you don’t
Pop it into your stand alone in the lounge and watch it on the TV screen, and if you don’t have one do make the effort and spend 30 Dollars on one.
Of course I got your point… a drive would be nice, but chances are you wouldn’t use it for the most part anyway. If it is not your only machine you can access a drive through your LAN.
It’s looks too much like Wii, despite the wooden finish.
So what’s wrong with that?
Nothing! It’s just another random blatant obvious observation.
I do hope they stick with the bamboo sides – bamboo is very sturdy, and can be easily stained like wood.
too bad it’s missing sound … could have potential for a nice media center unit.
Oh yeah, that would have been nice also…
Maybe they should have just swapped the DVI with an HDMI port
The Register article claims that it has an optical spdif port on the back, and analog audio on the front. I suppose that would do for those with separate audio setups, though I would have preferred an HDMI port.
That thing is going to be a big seller. From the point of view of style, space and power saving, it’s already a huge winner and you’re going to probably see this become the standard piece of MythTV hardware and other such devices for just about everyone. There is nothing you have to build in yourself there. It has everything.
Considering that they showed this alongside a new TV:
http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/007065.html
I’d be surprised if the TV tuner rumour wasn’t true. Asus have got the most compelling and interesting product line around today.
Yes, the base can be removed. It can lay flat, on the base, or mount behind a monitor with an included VESA mount. Anandtech posted a review (sort of) and some benchmarks of the Intel Atom. There’s was black with gray specs.
http://tinyurl.com/67tw5l
Aha! Thanks for the link.
I see in one of those pictures that the faceplate flips down to reveal additional ports:
“With the front panel flipped down you’ve got a HDD activity LED, power button/LED, two USB ports, a SD card slot, 1/8†audio out and 1/8†mic input. ”
Very good.
Still no optical drive though
Unless you were planning to use this as your main PC I’m not sure you would need an optical drive, there are so many other options.
Install over your network.
Use solely freeware apps from the web, the quality of which has grown tremendously over the past couple of years.
Use web based apps.
Heck I’d even go as far as saying ditch the hard drive too and put an SSD back in there, I could use the ridiculous amount of free space I have left over on my web host for storage.
If none of these options appeal to you, have you considered the playstation 3 as an alternative? I’m told that has an optical drive.
Edited 2008-06-07 03:16 UTC
I hope the new boxes are as hardy as the eeepc is. I have dropped my eeepc several times from a good height and it is still working. My power supply on my home box blew out several months ago and I was able to just unplug my external USB drives and plug them into the eeepc. I was amazed the little machine could power a 20 inch LCD monitor and all the USB devices I had attached to it. If the price was right I would buy one of the new Asus boxes just to have a backup computer around. It would be nice if they supported Firewire or eSATA drives.
Edited 2008-06-06 23:23 UTC
It’s a bambu tiles cover…
Better than wood in the looks, but still related.
BTW: Bambu is a high-tech material, very strong and a very resistant color… always the same… doesn’t fade nor gets darker.
Edited 2008-06-07 14:41 UTC
I don’t know if there’s anything I’m missing (I didn’t RTFA) but I can hardly understand the concept of Bambu being a “high-tech material” … I have been growing bambu in my garden for like decades.
Perhaps there’s some different “Bambu” in english I couldn’t find, because if I recall correctly what I have home would be called Bamboo in english, but, anyways… never heard of “Bambu” outside of a few languages that call Bamboo that way.
What, still no FireWire?
The optical drive issue can be taken care by having a media server for it
Infact eeebox would make a very nice thin client capable of streaming desktop / music / media by connecting to a thin client server such as thinserver
http://www.aikotech.com/thinserver/htm
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20080609#feature
“It’s better with Windows” hey? Better for whom? Certainly I can see that it is better for Microsoft, and it may well turn out that Microsoft have made it better for ASUS … but it certainly isn’t better for anyone who has to pay for one.
Windows will make it more expensive, make it run slower, make it become more susceptible to malware, therefore require it to have malware protection software, and make it less functional out of the box than the Linux equivalent.
FTA:
Such a shame that ASUS has apparently decided (or has been paid) to exit from the very market that the earlier model of this machine created and made such a success of late last year and early this year.