This computer represents the future i think, and hope. Computers are going to develop in humongous game- and high-performance monsters on the one side and cute little modular home- (mostly multimedia) processor-units.

full HD-compatibility (and recording capabilities) aside the lay-out of this computer is perfect. Some people see the lack of a disk-drive as a drawback, i see it as logical. This computer looks like what future home-calculating-units should look like: small, low-power, ultralow-noise, modular.

This particular model looks already a perfect home-entertainment backbone to me, if u can do without full HD. Personally i would be very satisfied with 720p, especially because im a bit of a cheap guy and dont'want 2 invest in full-HD screens yet.

I hope more manufacturers wil follow up on this design. The newly announced 204/206 models look like realy awesome 2 me. I realy hope more comps with this lay-out wil start 2 apear.

The question really is....

Is that a big cat or a tiny computer?

Looking at the review I really think the atom is best left to mobile systems, the Nano looks much more suitable for small form factor desktops / cheap systems.

The atom is amazing for what its really meant for, mobile and long battery life systems.

Now I'm not comparing the atom to the nano here, they really are in different categories.

Especially when you consider how limiting Intel is with Atom based systems features, the Nano looks really compelling.

There's no way this thing is worth more than $200-250.

Nice concept, lame price.

It might sell briskly at first but I can't imagine strong sales lasting at those prices.

I could be wrong.

Am I the only one here that has no idea who Dustin Sklavos is?

On a related note, nice review. If this was your first review, you did a great job and I hope to read more of your stuff in the future. If it wasn't, you still did a great job but I feel pretty slow for not realizing you were writing reviews until now.

fwiw, the Via nano is nice, but Via's linux support is less than stellar.

A real shame that it cant play video properly.

This would be perfect for using as a media extender, which I would really like. Unfortunately, the inability to handle even 720p makes it useless for that. That's a terrible shame because I can see this being a big market percentage.

It would have been pretty cool if they had an optional vesa mount, meaning you could mount the system to the back of your monitor (for the ones that offer a different mounting spot for the base anyways).

We have an application that would be perfect for these things: a touchscreen. When the screen isn't being touched, all it has to do is run the screensaver. The smallness is perfect because of how the touchscreens are mounted, it can just live behind the screens in the niches. Purrrfect!

Too bad newegg doesn't have them in stock, yet.

As much as I wanted a Nano based box for 24/7 needs, I'll hold off and stick with my C2D Mini.

Great review. Thanks!
A couple of comments.

I wonder how much of the lackluster video performance is due to it being single-channel memory?

Also, why the heck is Star Office still around? Open Office will never gain any ground over MS Office if the free stuff is still being split by SO and OO. (not that I particularly like OO, but that's a different topic).

HDMI or DisplayPort would have made this one a winner, *for me*.

Some how Asus decided we want to pay Apple prices for low budget hardware.
We need machines like these with dual NICs and e-sata - they would make perfect low power linux firewalls, and / or servers.

I think this product is completely pointless. The reason the Eee PC works, is because it's a self-contained little laptop, you got your screen, keyboard and access to WiFi all rolled up into one sleek unit that can go where you go. While this requires a monitor, full size keyboard / mouse so it’s tied down and lacks the power to be useful as a static setup.

It seems this is too much like the Eee PC but without any of the portability advantages. What advantages am I getting by having to tie this to a monitor & keyboard? Why a computer literate person would buy one of these is beyond me. It lacks the power to be useful, this need to be able to push 720p perfectly like an AppleTV. As for the Student, the only thing this is good for is a dedicated 24/7 bittorrent client that uses little energy. That said if they had made this into an iMac clone with the computer built into a 17” / 19” monitor then you have something that could be interesting.

As a cheap desktop alternative that comes packaged with monitor, etc. it might do more harm then good if it can't do video out of the box. YouTube had problems which I'm very surprised at, IE7 must be some serious blotware.

Like in your conclusion, there’s cheap power to be had in the desktop arena and cost vs performance doesn’t add up.

Hey Sklavos, can we get a blog post with just pictures of ur cat?

Could you do a quick power consumption test please? Something like idle, idle w/ wifi and load (youtube?!) - be very interesting to see how low the consumption is. Thanks :)

Now this is freaking cool. The two things that have been keeping me from getting that ~$80 Atom barebones that was introduced a while ago were the lack of DVI and the fact that I would need to still go out and buy a case, hard drive, and memory. This would be perfect, and it's even smaller to boot.

$300 seems a little steep on the surface, but if the Linux variant was $250 to $275 it would be really hard for me to pass up. I'd nuke whatever it came with, toss Gentoo on the thing and go to town.

If it had a Firewire400 jack I would have been sold on it as a cheap, quiet, DAW. USB2.0 is too processor hungry, especially for a 1.6ghz, and would cause too many hiccups while recording. Pass.

Asus has provided us with some new information on the Eee Box, and we've updated the review accordingly. Here's a quick run-down of the most important changes:

-Upgrading the systems memory and hard drive will not void the warranty.
-Retail packaging will include a DVI-to-VGA adapter.
-Norton Anti-Virus won't be included with the final package.
-The retail version will sell with a single 1GB memory module.

I thought the original Eee came with a 915 chipset.

This would make an excellent linux web server for home needs.

A slot loading optical drive, and a discrete graphics chip (i.e., Radeon 24xx) and I'd have bought one. Pity.

HD playback (or lack thereof) is the nail in the coffin for the little EeePC that couldn't.

MEEEOOOWWW!!!! God I love cats, they're so badass

Can i have more pics of that cat ?? Please .. ??

Knock off 50$ and the useless copy of XP and I'm looking more closely.

Little bitty boxes making no noise and little heat sound good, my wife + daughter would make happy use of email + light web machines. Ubuntu is just dandy for them, and I like the pricing better, too.

The comments about switching to Nano sound really good too. A Nano-based Box with something mildly more capable for chipset+graphics could be very impressive.

Nice box, shame about the chipset, and Intel's attitude.

Asus, come out with an equivalent box using a VIA Nano CPU please. Or sweet-talk AMD into a good deal involving a cheap low-end underclocked X2 and the 780V chipset that would at least be able to decode 720p H.264 video.

For all that Atom is meant to be cheap, systems based around it aren't coming in much cheaper than those based on far larger and more powerful CPUs, even if the Atom systems are smaller and cooler (excepting the dire 945 chipset they cripple the systems with).

After a few months with Atom, I find myself saddened about the whole thing. It promised even cheaper systems that could do some good stuff, but in the end it's provided systems that you could do already with a mobile CPU + chipset if anyone had bothered, and for about the same price, with a crap chipset.

Maybe when someone couples a dual-core Atom with a decent Intel chipset ... but it seems like Intel won't allow that. So Atom is dead for me, pretty much, for now. The original Mac Mini came out over three years ago, for $150 more, and is still more powerful and featureful than this.

Good review though.

Our review unit arrived outfitted with 1GB of DDR2-400 RAM running at exceptionally tight 3-3-3-9 timings. Curiously, despite the presence of a pair of 512MB DIMMs in the unit, a visit to Everest notes that the memory is running on a single channel. The memory controller itself is dual-channel-capable. Asus says the unit should actually have a single DIMM installed and a slot free, but realistically, 1GB of single-channel memory is plenty for this type of computer.

Apparently Intel has mandated that all Atom systems will use single-channel memory. (I don't remember where I read it, I think it was one of TR's own writeups.) I wouldn't be surprised if Intel crippled the 945 to create the 945GSE and 945GC chipsets.