As expected, ASUS have announced a Celeron-based version of their nettop, the Eee Box B203. Swapping the usual Intel Atom 1.6GHz processor for a Celeron C220 running at 1.2GHz, despite the clock speed drop the less power-efficient Celeron should actually run faster than its Atom sibling.
ASUS has finally seen sense, and outfitted its latest Eee Box nettop models with HDMI outputs; that makes them ideal for use as a media center extender. Outwardly identical to the existing Eee Box, the two new models – B204 and B206 – retain the 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 processor, 1GB of RAM and 160GB hard-drive, but gain a new ATI Radeon HD 3400 GPU with 256MB memory.
ASUS are planning a Celeron version of their Eee Box nettop, which will be cheaper than the current Intel Atom N270 model. According to DigiTimes, poor sales of the Eee Box – which packs hardware usually found in the company’s Eee PC netbook into a slender desktop form-factor – has prompted the new entry-level machine, which will go on sale alongside the existing nettop.
The Eee PC will get at least two touchscreen variants announced in early 2009, with both convertible and standard notebook form-factor designs being explored. That’s the latest news from ASUS CEO Jerry Shen, who has been sharing some more details about what’s become the largest netbook range on the market. As well as the touchscreen models, ASUS have obviously decided to take Steve Ballmer at his word and miss Windows Vista out completely; instead, they’re planning to introduce Windows 7 to netbooks in the second half of 2009.
ASUS has admitted that its Eee Box nettop – the desktop version of its popular Eee PC netbook range – shipped to some customers carrying a virus. According to an email sent out from the company, the Japanese version of the device has a virus file called “recycled.exe” saved in the D: drive partition. If activated, the virus begins to copy itself to the C: drive and any attached USB memory sticks or hard-drives.
ASUS’ Eee Box reached the first reviewers at the end of last week, and today HotHardware have published their own thoughts on the compact desktop PC. Based, as with much of the notebook Eee range, on Intel’s 1.6GHz N270 Atom CPU, their review unit had 1GB of DDR2 RAM, an 80GB hard-drive, gigabit ethernet and draft-n WiFi.
Week in Review time, and it seems like there’s plenty to look back on over the past seven days. Continuing our fresh tradition, in the fast-moving netbook segment we’ve seen confirmation of ASUS’ Eee PC plans – 23 models in all, the next of which being the 701SD, together with dual-core and bigger SSD versions – as well as Sylvania’s new G Netbook MESO, the target $299 tag of which got plenty of people hot under the collar. Price is a sore subject over at MSI, who saw their Wind netbook rise in cost uncontrollably, while E-Lead are likely celebrating their Noahpad – with its distinctive dual-touchpad keyboard – finally reaching customers.
There’s plenty to look forward to, as well, with Intel confirming a refresh of their Classmate PC, a video showing Fujitsu’s upcoming Amilo Mini playing with interchangeable casings, and Lenovo tipped for a new netbook to be released in September. If you can afford a bit more, and can’t wait until September, Lenovo’s ThinkPad X200 is a proper, grown-up ultraportable set to launch imminently; going by the first hands-on reports it looks to be a winner, with battery life getting particular credit.
ASUS’ Eee Box, the desktop version of the company’s popular netbook, has reached at least one reviewer. PC Authority have not only given us the usual unboxing gallery, but some shots of the Eee Box sitting next to its 901 notebook sibling and in the shadow of a Sony PS3 (to show you just how compact the system really is).
Bizarrely, despite “officially launching” the Eee Box PC at Computex 2008 back at the beginning of the month, ASUS have now officially launched it again via a press release on their site. Thing is, the latest B202 release actually contains less detail than the first time around; for some reason they’ve not repeated their original pricing, $269 for the Linux model and $299 for the Windows model.
With all the Atom-powered notebooks on show at Computex, you’d be excused for thinking that Intel’s manufacturing shortfall was long past. Not true, worried out loud Asustek’s Jerry Shen; both the new Eee PC 901 and 1000, together with the Eee Box B202, are powered by the 1.6GHz processor. While denying that Atom availability would seriously impact upcoming Eee shipments, Shen did suggest that, unless Intel ramp up production by October, getting hold of an Eee pre-holiday would be tricky. Of course, Intel responded by saying that, in fact, fabrication would be up to speed by September.
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