So, can a
$299 mini desktop really find a place in your jaded heart? Based on a recent review by
HotHardware, the answer is a resounding "yes." In terms of general performance, the box delivered more potency than critics expected, and the hardware within was able to provide a "a fluid experience in all but the full 1080p digital video playback test." Of note, it didn't have any trouble churning through a 720p clip, so there's still hope for folks obsessed with flipping through HD trailers for hours on end. Furthermore, the unit was found to be remarkably energy efficient, with only "a slightly heavier draw than an Eee PC 900." Of course, we wouldn't expect this to replace your Alienware or anything, but for the most average of tasks, the
B202 should be adequate enough. Hit the read link for the full rundown.
posted Aug 4th 2008 8:37AM
Out of the thousands of computer models they reveal every few days, this is the only one I'm interested in. They should release this, not another netbook!
This is great. I hope they have a new model Asus Box every week, too. Within a month that should have that 1080p playback problem licked by model 204B. Should take only two or three in-between models to reach that goal.
anybody know if and where you can buy these in North America ?
So it is in the $299 range? last week the article said $429?
Agreed, less notebooks, more mini pc's Asus. You guys heard of J&R's promo?
http://www.jr.com/promotion/listContent.jsp?promoName=EeeBoxDemo
Engadget in praise of EEE shocker!
I thought it was company policy for bashing a company giving its customers choice...
A choice?!
I swear to God if I wanted to buy an Eee laptop right now I would need to use Wikipedia to figure out what in God's name would be the best model.
That's not good marketing.
Hahaha I've actually had to do that.
if you just want an eee you can just go buy an eee , but if you want an eee with an atom processor and a particular keyboard because it revidwed better and maybe you want ssd instead of hdd , and ..etc etc .. you can see which one you want and buy it.
dont knock em for giving you a choice and not sacrificing your choices just to market it better.
@sinjinn
'if you just want an eee you can just go buy an eee"
No, you can't. That's the point. If you do, you're likely to forego a model better suited to your needs because you didn't do your research.
@pochi
thats doesnt make sense. you are saying they should only make one model just incase you miss out on something better.
so basically you want NO choice to prevent them making something after you bought your eee.
Just curious how do you do a recovery when windows gets slow and needs a fresh install with no optical drive.
Im pretty sure aslong as the hard drive doesnt crash u can simply just reinstall from a separte partition of XP already there.
re: No optical drive - use a USB one or copy the install from over the network to the HD? People with laptops/tablets without optical drives have been doing this for years.
D.
I always kept a freshly cloned install on a hard drive partition to re-create a replacement. Hooking up a drive to a USB port and installing a clone is much faster than a fresh optical drive install.
Norton Ghost works fine:
http://www.oakdome.com/lab/?page_id=33
bootable jump drive....
The Eee Box kit comes with a detailed User's Manual, a Quick Start Guide, a warranty card, and a couple of DVDs - one with the System Recovery image and the other a Support CD that contains a number of useful tools for reconfiguring or restoring the Eee Box, including a utility to create a bootable thumb drive with the factory OS image.
From the review..
"The Eee Box kit comes with a detailed User's Manual, a Quick Start Guide, a warranty card, and a couple of DVDs - one with the System Recovery image and the other a Support CD that contains a number of useful tools for reconfiguring or restoring the Eee Box, including a utility to create a bootable thumb drive with the factory OS image."
So if you have a spare computer with a DVD drive, you're all set.
Anyways, I want one or maybe two of these. I wish Asus would announce the official launch date.
Hmm i was considering getting a Mac mini for my new HTPC but if this can play my 720p rips without a problem i may reconsider. Ok Asus you have 2 weeks to convince me.
step 1...remove stickers
If you remove the stickers the Box would look like crap. They provide the only bit of color on that plain, ugly exterior.
i actually agree with steffen, it looks like a toy..
@Steffen Jobbs
You're a huge Apple fan. I thought you liked plain and ugly.
A video review is here as well:
http://www.hothardware.com/Articles/Asus_Eee_Box_B202_Desktop_System__Video_Spotlight/
Those are some seriously huge ass stickers, especially the XP one.
The stickers are standard size, it's the box that's really small.
So many choices now. For $299 this is a steal. $560 for mac mini sounds expensive now. But the size of the mini is what i like.
please don't bother with the mac mini, unless you plan to uninstall OSX and put in Linux.
OSX hogs too many resources to run on the Mac Mini.
I know... I have one.
So when does this thing actually go on sale? I want to buy one for my domicile in my castle in the nether regions of England.
now we just need them to add a slot load dvdrw and we are teh win!
I could understand leaving the optical drive out of the netbooks, but on a desktop?
damn, I need somthing to playback those 1080p, if not, whats the point?
I just wish it had a decent graphics chip. If so, it would be a must buy for me. Oh well.
Sorry, needs an internal optical drive.
Still it has plenty of power. Probably as much as my 4 year old work computer with a single core Athlon 64 and 2gb of ram.
I've done the research, it's basically impossible to build anything as powerful and small as this. Plus it has SplashTop. I'm sold
And even that gets ugly sticker on the front :/
They should call it the ASUS Wii Box
Perfect in almost every way I see it, but if it had a damn dvd drive, it would have been great. I mean they could've at least sacrifice a bit of the slimness and put a fuckin dvd drive in there
I wonder how this would fare as a carputer?? The mac mini has been a popular choice up through now. I was thinking of something like a cherry pc, but it's ARM architecture rather than x86, so Windows XP would be out of the question. at only $100 more, this might make a smart move.
The lack of an optical drive wouldn't matter a lot, most head units have a disc input. The only thing that would suffer is the lack of DVD playback, and you wouldn't be able to rip CDs on the fly. hmm...
Combine this with a pico projector,
It is a winner!
Ok just order this baby at zipzoomfly.com, I am giving Asus another try after buying the Eee 900 which fails to impress me and sold it after 2 weeks, and even if they say it is for checking emails and doing some light work the 900 still is very slow. So if this thing really can do a decent play especially checking emails and watching movies online (wink) then this is set for me rather than mac mini, which i still think is a better buy.
can l instal windows media centre(not the player) the one found on vista machines on this pc. I need to use it as my home entertainment Pc hooked to the 42cm plasma TV..Pls help