
Nothing succeeds like success seems to be the new motto of ASUS about their EEE range of machines. Their EEE 700 and 900 series have been a great success and now they have launched a desktop in the same range. The beauty of this desktop is the fact that it is very small. All too often large desktop boxes are dumped on the floor as there is no room on the desk and then it becomes more difficult to plug in some extra device, whether that is a USB drive, a camera or another printer.
ASUS have kept it very simple and have named this the EEE Box. This ASUS EEE Box is different from established desktops as it is very small. It is also inexpensive, for example in the U.S.A. it should retail at between $200 and $300 but that is for the box on its own. It will still need a keyboard, monitor and mouse.
The specification of the ASUS EEE box is interesting. A Linux operating system is the main one on offer with it being compatible with Windows XP. The Intel AtomTM 1.6 GHz processor is backed up with 512Mb, 1 GB or 2 GB of RAM. The Hard drive options are from 80 GB to 250 GB. There is wireless and wired LAN with optional Bluetooth. The boxes are only 8.5 inches by 7 inches by 1 inch and weigh in at around 2.2 lbs (1 Kg if you prefer). There is a choice of colors for the box itself, making sure it doesn't clash with the color of the office.
The machines do not feature an optical drive and any installs or backups will need to be performed on an external drive. There is no option to run these machines on Windows Vista and as the support of Windows XP runs out very shortly except for sub-notebooks it puts anyone who want to run these under windows at something of a disadvantage. The version of Linux is also not clear from the releases I have read. The option of the Xandros Linux that already runs of the ASUS EEE would seem to be very likely. Any large company might decide to load its preferred version of Linux rather than one that ASUS provides.
For a growing business with a small but growing workforce this would seem to be an excellent way of providing a cheap desktop for every employee. The difficulty may be the flexibility of new workers to accept either Windows XP or Linux when they may be used to Windows Vista.
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