David Flynn27 April 2009, 8:52 PM
The second-gen $699 Eee Box is a souped-up netbook in desktop clothing, but with dreams of becoming an adjunct to your home theatre system.
First came the Eee PC, which revolutionised mobile computing and ushered in the dawn of the netbook era. Then came the Eee Box, which repackaged the netbook components into a compact desktop form factor.
Just as the Eee PC was never meant to compete with a conventional laptop, so the Eee Box wasn’t worried about big desktop bullies kicking silicon sand in its face. The Eee Box was marketed as a second or third PC hanging off the home network for simple utility tasks such as Microsoft Office plus Internet-centric applications such as Web browsing, email and VoIP.
But where the original Eee Box B202 found unexpected favour among the screwdriver set was as a simplified ‘home entertainment hub’ for piping digital content into your home theatre system. You had to work around some compromises however, such as the absence of an HMDI port and a reliance on Intel’s measly integrated graphics which limited video playback to standard definition.
The new Eee Box systems come in ebony and ivory ("Buy them both and Asus will be happy...")
Now Asus has refreshed the Eee Box with two new models which make a better attempt at playing the home theatre card. Both the B206 ($799) and B204 ($899) gain a 256MB ATI Radeon HD 3400 GPU that’s capable of running full 1080 HD, and an HDMI port (alongside the DVI port) for pumping the pixels onto your LCD or plasma telly.
Other standard fitout includes Intel’s Atom N270 processor, 1GB of 533MHz DDR2 RAM (easily upgradable to a maximum of 2GB, which we recommend for media playback) and a 2.5 inch 160GB SATA II hard drive (although this is only 5400rpm with a 2MB buffer, so a faster 7200rpm platter with a larger buffer would also add some pep to video playback).
Wireless is in the form of 802.11n, with Gigabit Ethernet and four USB 2.0 ports.
The preloaded OS is still Windows XP Home, although Asus’ own Eee Cinema software takes care of playing your music and videos and running photo slideshows. If you’re in a hurry the Linux-based Splashgate pre-boot environment, which Asus has branded as Express Gate, also has basic media playback as well as comes with a Firefox-derived Web browser, Pidgin instant messaging and Skype.
The extra $100 you pay for the B204 over the B206 (yes, it seems Asus has got its model numbering scheme backwards) lands you a netbook-style battery, which Asus spruiks as acting as a UPS in case of power failure – but then, if the power goes out you won’t have any TV set or home theatre system on which to play your media, nor an Internet connection so you can fire up Twitter and ask who else has been hit by the blackout.