Anandtech: ASUS Eee Box: Initial Impressions and Dissection

[dougz]

Short, informative article by Anand Lal Shimpi. Nice picture gallery.

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The machine I received features a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor paired with an Intel 945G chipset, 1GB of DDR2-667 memory (a single SO-DIMM module is installed) and a 160GB Seagate Momentus 5400.4 2.5" SATA hard drive. There is no optical drive but the machine has built in Gigabit Ethernet and 802.11n wireless. Bluetooth is also built in so you can setup the machine to only have two wires coming out of it (DC power and DVI out to your monitor).
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3. There's no optical drive but the machine is fairly well connected thanks to integrated Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11n and Bluetooth.

4. The system isn't passively cooled although I suspect it could be. Unfortunately the fan is fairly noisy for the size of the system, at least in this early machine. I've already passed along the feedback to ASUS so we'll see if any changes can be made before the thing ships.

5. Like most modern ASUS motherboards, the Eee Box can boot into Express Gate (splashtop) which gives you instant access to IM (via Pidgin), Skype, a web browser or a photo browser.

6. While the Eee Box is fast enough to decode DivX/Xvid, it doesn't have the horsepower to do full 1080p H.264. I've found that low bitrate 720p H.264 is possible but with CPU utilization at around 90%. I would've preferred if ASUS had used the mobile Atom processor as its chipset has full H.264 decode acceleration, although I get the impression that it's not quite ready.
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http://www.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=451

[dougz]

65 watt power brick, gigabit LAN, 945GSE + ICH7M. More info --

US Configurations and MSRP:
$269 - 1GB memory + 80GB HDD Linux edition
$299 - 1GB memory + 80GB HDD XP edition
$299 - 2GB memory + 160GB HDD Linux edition
http://www.hothardware.com/News/ASUS_Ee ... ls_Emerge/
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9957071-7.html