Review: Asus’s Mini Invasion Continues with the Pint-Sized Eee Box
Asus has been cranking out new versions of the Eee PC faster than a Kansas twister, all thanks to the growing herd of Eee-mitators out there. Still, with everyone and their grandmother now hot for these little dwarfbooks, the company’s continued claim to the mini laptop throne is tenuous at best — even with those 23 existing and soon-to-be-released Eee PC configurations.
Behold, the new Eee Box! Like the rest of the Eee bloodline, these varicolored desktop boxes are small, cheap and adorable. Unlike Eee PCs, they’re in a league of their own…at least for the time being.
In essence, Asus simply did what Apple has been doing for years: using notebook innards to assemble small-form factor desktop PC (think AppleTV or iMac). Only Asus is doing it on the low end. Indeed, the unit’s specs are more or less identical to the latest Eee PC 901 — save for the beefier 80- or 160-GB hard drives you can choose between.
What’s really interesting about the new Eee Box, however, is how these components actually end up working better in a desktop setting. Much of what hampered Eee PCs — those small, cramped keyboards and tiny screens — are not an issue here. And at $270 or $300, it’s hard to find anything out there that offers as much for as little.
Sure, you can configure some craptastic Dell rig that’ll be more powerful, but you’ll also give up form factor and pay a good $100 more for all the fixins.
Intel’s 1.6 GHz Atom processor, up to 2 GBs of memory, four USB ports, an SD card slot, 802.11n and Bluetooth are plenty for the Eee Box to hit that elusive “good enough” mark with aplomb. Once again, you’ll get your choice of running either Linux or Windows XP. And, borrowing another page from Apple’s playbook, you’ll also get the Michael Jackson “Black or White” color options.
Then there’s the size. Living up to its Eee heritage, this box makes its few competitors look downright pudgy. While it does have a slightly larger overall footprint, it’s much trimmer than the Mac Mini. The Eee Box even makes Asus’s own Nova P22 mini PC look like it was viciously beaten with the fat stick. Not only will this elegant 8.5 x 7 x 1-inch box fit anywhere, but you also have the choice of mounting it directly to the back of any extra monitor you happen to have one lying around.
To be clear, the Eee Box is not for sweaty frag fests or heavy duty HD video decoding. But if you have hankering for a killer kitchen PC or just an uber cheap second or third home PC that runs Linux or XP, it simply can’t be beat. Let the Eee Box knock-offs commence! —Bryan GardinerWIRED Small, lightweight and cuter than bowl full of kittens. More than enough processing power for everyday computing. Cheaper than a Malaysian prostitute. The option of running Splashtop for pre-boot access to Skype, web browsing and IM clients.
TIRED Where’s the optical drive? No HDMI output, which actually doesn’t matter much because there’s also no hardware decode acceleration. By itself, the Atom processor can barely handle 720p H.264 streams, dashing our hopes of this being the ultimate home streaming box.
$300 as tested, asus.com
Review: Asus’s Mini Invasion Continues with the Pint-Sized Eee Box
Asus has been cranking out new versions of the Eee PC faster than a Kansas twister, all thanks to the growing herd of Eee-mitators out there. Still, with everyone and their grandmother now hot for these little dwarfbooks, the company’s continued claim to the mini laptop throne is tenuous at best — even with those 23 existing and soon-to-be-released Eee PC configurations.
Behold, the new Eee Box! Like the rest of the Eee bloodline, these varicolored desktop boxes are small, cheap and adorable. Unlike Eee PCs, they’re in a league of their own…at least for the time being.
In essence, Asus simply did what Apple has been doing for years: using notebook innards to assemble small-form factor desktop PC (think AppleTV or iMac). Only Asus is doing it on the low end. Indeed, the unit’s specs are more or less identical to the latest Eee PC 901 — save for the beefier 80- or 160-GB hard drives you can choose between.
What’s really interesting about the new Eee Box, however, is how these components actually end up working better in a desktop setting. Much of what hampered Eee PCs — those small, cramped keyboards and tiny screens — are not an issue here. And at $270 or $300, it’s hard to find anything out there that offers as much for as little.
Sure, you can configure some craptastic Dell rig that’ll be more powerful, but you’ll also give up form factor and pay a good $100 more for all the fixins.
Intel’s 1.6 GHz Atom processor, up to 2 GBs of memory, four USB ports, an SD card slot, 802.11n and Bluetooth are plenty for the Eee Box to hit that elusive “good enough” mark with aplomb. Once again, you’ll get your choice of running either Linux or Windows XP. And, borrowing another page from Apple’s playbook, you’ll also get the Michael Jackson “Black or White” color options.
Then there’s the size. Living up to its Eee heritage, this box makes its few competitors look downright pudgy. While it does have a slightly larger overall footprint, it’s much trimmer than the Mac Mini. The Eee Box even makes Asus’s own Nova P22 mini PC look like it was viciously beaten with the fat stick. Not only will this elegant 8.5 x 7 x 1-inch box fit anywhere, but you also have the choice of mounting it directly to the back of any extra monitor you happen to have one lying around.
To be clear, the Eee Box is not for sweaty frag fests or heavy duty HD video decoding. But if you have hankering for a killer kitchen PC or just an uber cheap second or third home PC that runs Linux or XP, it simply can’t be beat. Let the Eee Box knock-offs commence! —Bryan GardinerWIRED Small, lightweight and cuter than bowl full of kittens. More than enough processing power for everyday computing. Cheaper than a Malaysian prostitute. The option of running Splashtop for pre-boot access to Skype, web browsing and IM clients.
TIRED Where’s the optical drive? No HDMI output, which actually doesn’t matter much because there’s also no hardware decode acceleration. By itself, the Atom processor can barely handle 720p H.264 streams, dashing our hopes of this being the ultimate home streaming box.
$300 as tested, asus.com
Iomega DVR Expander is the Perfect Solution to Your HD Storage Problem
Iomega DVR Expander Drive
When is an external hard drive not a hard drive? Apparently, when it’s a DVR expander. In a perfect world, these glorified drives would be wholly unnecessary, as any device fitted with a USB, Firewire or eSATA port would work seamlessly with a similarly equipped external HDD.
Instead, we get various iterations of DVRs, each with crippled or non-functioning expansion ports. And once we’re done silently cursing the darkness and/or clogging them up with unwatched episodes of Golden Girls, then we get to choose from range of special purpose drives — each “certified” to work with this or that digital video recorder.
Sure, there are various workarounds and hacks that promise to liberate these locked down ports and let you use whatever run of the mill external drive you have laying around. But if you want a quick fix to your dwindling DVR storage problem, your easiest choice for now is DVR expansion.
Iomega’s own $190 solution is a 500GB drive that plays nice with two DVRs in particular: Scientific Atlanta’s 80GB standard definition 8300 and the more recent 160GB 8300HD model. We tested the drive out on the latter model and found it more or less did what it promised. It even worked with a neighbor’s Series 3 TiVo, which (to its credit) is known for being something of an eSATA slut.
Set up in both instances was quick and painless, and involved simply turning off the DVR, plugging in the Iomega drive, and then turning everything back on again. Voila, no more having to choose between Emmanuelle: The Art of Love and the latest episode of Mad Men. —Bryan Gardiner
WIRED Reasonably priced. Your grandmother could probably set it up if you left her in the room long enough. Instantly adds an additional 300 hours of SD TV, or 60 hours of HD content.
TIRED Only one way to connect the drive to a DVR (that would be eSATA). Limited compatibility, although Iomega claims the drive with work with future SA eSATA enabled DVRs. No way of controlling what gets stored on the expander drive and what get stored on the DVR. Transporting DVR’d content to you computer is verboten and plugging the drive into a computer will automatically reformat it.
$190, iomega.com
Iomega DVR Expander is the Perfect Solution to Your HD Storage Problem
Iomega DVR Expander Drive
When is an external hard drive not a hard drive? Apparently, when it’s a DVR expander. In a perfect world, these glorified drives would be wholly unnecessary, as any device fitted with a USB, Firewire or eSATA port would work seamlessly with a similarly equipped external HDD.
Instead, we get various iterations of DVRs, each with crippled or non-functioning expansion ports. And once we’re done silently cursing the darkness and/or clogging them up with unwatched episodes of Golden Girls, then we get to choose from range of special purpose drives — each “certified” to work with this or that digital video recorder.
Sure, there are various workarounds and hacks that promise to liberate these locked down ports and let you use whatever run of the mill external drive you have laying around. But if you want a quick fix to your dwindling DVR storage problem, your easiest choice for now is DVR expansion.
Iomega’s own $190 solution is a 500GB drive that plays nice with two DVRs in particular: Scientific Atlanta’s 80GB standard definition 8300 and the more recent 160GB 8300HD model. We tested the drive out on the latter model and found it more or less did what it promised. It even worked with a neighbor’s Series 3 TiVo, which (to its credit) is known for being something of an eSATA slut.
Set up in both instances was quick and painless, and involved simply turning off the DVR, plugging in the Iomega drive, and then turning everything back on again. Voila, no more having to choose between Emmanuelle: The Art of Love and the latest episode of Mad Men. —Bryan Gardiner
WIRED Reasonably priced. Your grandmother could probably set it up if you left her in the room long enough. Instantly adds an additional 300 hours of SD TV, or 60 hours of HD content.
TIRED Only one way to connect the drive to a DVR (that would be eSATA). Limited compatibility, although Iomega claims the drive with work with future SA eSATA enabled DVRs. No way of controlling what gets stored on the expander drive and what get stored on the DVR. Transporting DVR’d content to you computer is verboten and plugging the drive into a computer will automatically reformat it.
$190, iomega.com
