Asus's Unusually Compact Eee Box PC

ASUS'S EEE BOX features a smaller footprint and a slimmer profile than the average laptop-and yet it's designed to sit on your desk. The Eee Box starts at just $350, making it a bargain as basihc home PC. But the machine's performance is unimpressive.

The Eee Box-the desktop computer sibling of Asus's Eee PC notebook-comes with a 1.6-GHz N270 Atom processor, 1GB of RAM, and a 5400-rpm, 80GB, 2.5-inch SATA-150 hard drive. It also has an integrated Intel GMA 950 graphics chip that relies on shared video memory.

Though the Eee Box will do fine for browsing online and for word processing, it is hardly a robust unit, scoring just 36 on our WorldBench 6 tests. In some ways, though, performance is not the point: The system is designed to be a basic, powersaving network-attached device. Asus says that the Box draws just 15 to 20 watts of power-a smaller amount than most laptops use.

Our test unit came with Windows XP Home; Asus says that a Linux version should ship later this year. The Eee Box starts up into ExpressGate, a pre-Windows interface that allows you to boot into Windows, enter the BIOS, or use a simplified Linux-based environment that comes arrayed with a Web browser, an instant messaging client, and Skype.


The Eee Box is a great value that's geared toward students, as well as home and small-office users. That the system comes with Windows XP Home, Microsoft Works, and Sun StarOffice only sweetens the deal. -Nick Mediati

PC World November 2008