ASUS Eee Box: Preview & Intel's Atom Benchmarked

dougz · **Joined:** Thu Nov 24, 2005 3:03 pm **Posts:** 317

Nine page article, lots of detail, good pictures.

[quote]The Eee Box is effectively a headless notebook with no keyboard/mouse. In fact, the new version of the Eee PC features the exact same hardware configuration as the Eee Box - just in notebook form. Using notebook components in a â€œdesktopâ€

NeilBlanchard · **Posted:** Tue Jun 03, 2008 8:47 am

Hello Doug,

Thanks for posting this! That looks like a sweet unit.

Quote:

Phantom Power 1.2W
Idle Power 14.5W
Load Power 19W

Quote:

Unfortunately during testing the Eee Box was no where near silent, while we could manually reduce fan speed to make the system quiet the BIOS refused to do so by default. ASUS mentioned that there may be issues with the thermal sensor in our unit and the final production systems may be quieter.

Our sample is an early prototype and we expect a final unit by July, but for now ASUS isnâ€™t really capitalizing on the low power consumption of the Atom processor. The Eee Box should be silent and it just isnâ€™t right now.

dougz · **Joined:** Thu Nov 24, 2005 3:03 pm **Posts:** 317

Early days, prototype boxes, virtually no specs, but... the MSI looks like a better bet than the ASUS EBOX or Shuttle K45xx, at least to me.

Quote:

MSI WIND PC desktops are powered by their Micro-ATX based MS-7314 Wind Board motherboard which is passively cooled with a large aluminum heatsink covering the Northbridge and CPU. The board is nothing special with normal capacitors (not Japanese made solid capacitors), two DIMM slots for a total of 2GB memory in dual channel mode, two SATA-II ports for HDD and DVD combo drive, one PCI slot which could be used for an old sound card or TV tuner and finally an IDE port which could be used for an old hard disk drive for additional storage space.

MSI was demonstrating the WIND PC playing back 720p video and it managed to do it fairly smoothly for the most part. As you can see from the pictures it was using up around 45 â€“ 55% CPU for video playback. When asked if it is powerful enough to playback 1080p video, MSI said that WIND PC is not ready for 1080p video at the moment but didnâ€™t rule it out for newer and faster models in the future.

As far as power consumption goes, it excels with flying colors. For starters it has gained Energy Star 4.0 compliance which not many computers can claim at this stage and in the demo MSI was showing, it was using just 30 watts of power with a 1.6GHz processor â€“ we were told that the MSI WIND PC will use no more than 35 watts....

http://www.tweaktown.com/news/9519/up_close_with_msi_wind_desktop_in_taipei/index.html

More -- http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/06/04/MSI-launches-Wind-mini-desktop-mini-laptop_1.html

jaganath · **Posted:** Sun Jun 22, 2008 7:37 am

http://www.absolutegadget.com/200806221 ... aunch.html

Quote:

Asus also claimed that the Eee Box would be almost completely silent in operation

like everyone i really hope that the finished product lives up to these claims.

ist.martin · **Posted:** Mon Aug 04, 2008 1:52 pm

"The innovative ASUS thermal solution integrates a unique heat dissipation module with the AI fan â€“ allowing quiet (26db) and comfortable computing"

http://www.asus.com/news_show.aspx?id=11854

vincentfox · **Posted:** Mon Aug 04, 2008 10:46 pm

Still not at NewEgg. Any sightings yet in large distribution?

vincentfox · **Posted:** Mon Aug 18, 2008 3:37 pm

Aha, now see B202 at NewEgg.

Have to search for "Asus EEE Box" or "EBXB202" but it's there.

However, only WinXP version. No bare or Linux version.

I need a little server to run Linux, no interest in paying for Windows.

Bicster · **Posted:** Wed Aug 27, 2008 11:40 am

Can anyone tell me if the EEE B202 has a BIOS option to turn back on when power is restored after a power failure?

dougz · **Joined:** Thu Nov 24, 2005 3:03 pm **Posts:** 317

Bicster wrote:

Can anyone tell me if the EEE B202 has a BIOS option to turn back on when power is restored after a power failure?

The manual doesn't appear to be available online. You might have better luck directing your question to an ASUS support forum at http://vip.asus.com/forum/

Bicster · **Posted:** Thu Aug 28, 2008 5:56 am

dougz wrote:

Bicster wrote:

Can anyone tell me if the EEE B202 has a BIOS option to turn back on when power is restored after a power failure?

The manual doesn't appear to be available online. You might have better luck directing your question to an ASUS support forum at http://vip.asus.com/forum/

The manual is most definitely online, but it doesn't cover the BIOS in much detail. ASUS tech support is pretty worthless; I wouldn't trust their response. These machines have been shipping for a while and I'm hopeful one of you has one!

Apparently the BIOS is very stripped down, like most laptops.

jaganath · **Posted:** Thu Aug 28, 2008 9:25 am

Quote:

These machines have been shipping for a while and I'm hopeful one of you has one!

i might be getting one in a couple of weeks, if so will report on noise, features, etc.

dougz · **Joined:** Thu Nov 24, 2005 3:03 pm **Posts:** 317

Bicster wrote:

dougz wrote:

Bicster wrote:

Can anyone tell me if the EEE B202 has a BIOS option to turn back on when power is restored after a power failure?

The manual doesn't appear to be available online. You might have better luck directing your question to an ASUS support forum at http://vip.asus.com/forum/

The manual is most definitely online, but it doesn't cover the BIOS in much detail. ASUS tech support is pretty worthless; I wouldn't trust their response. These machines have been shipping for a while and I'm hopeful one of you has one!

Apparently the BIOS is very stripped down, like most laptops.

If the MSI Wind desktop is an alternative for you, their manual explicitly does cover this on page 4-14:

Quote:

Restore on AC Power Loss
This setting specifies whether your system will reboot after a power failure or interrupt occurs. Available settings are:
[Off] Leaves the computer in the power off state.
[On] Leaves the computer in the power on state.
[Last State] Restores the system to the previous status before power failure or interrupt occurred.
http://www.msicomputer.com/product/netpc/MS-6496-06S/WindPCManual.pdf?func=proddesc&prod_no=1100&maincat_no=134

http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_spec.asp?model=Wind_PC&class=npc
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856167032

tone · **Posted:** Sun Oct 05, 2008 2:41 pm

Bicster wrote:

Can anyone tell me if the EEE B202 has a BIOS option to turn back on when power is restored after a power failure?

Bicster did you get to find out about the power settings, I was wondering if you can set the BIOS to power the PC on at a set time?

dougz · **Joined:** Thu Nov 24, 2005 3:03 pm **Posts:** 317

Source -- http://www.heise-online.co.uk/security/Asus-warns-of-a-virus-infection-in-shipping-Eee-Boxes--/news/111691

Quote:

The Japanese division of Taiwanese computer and component manufacturer Asus is warning customers that shipping versions of its Eee Box B202 desktop computer are infected with a virus. According to Asus, the virus is located on the D drive in a file called recycled.exe. When the user opens the D drive, the virus is triggered and immediately starts copying itself onto the C drive and any connected USB media....

More -- http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/10/08/asus_eee_box_virus/

vincentfox · **Posted:** Thu Oct 09, 2008 9:18 am

Anyone sighted the Linux variant in major distribution channels.

I see the one with Windows, but don't want to pay MS tax.

Layla · **Posted:** Thu Oct 09, 2008 9:25 am

I was thrilled with this one initially too (great review, SPCR!), so I took a look... the EEE mini box is apparently now in Europe already too.. at least in UK, if not in my country yet...

http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=40467&p=2 in this thread a user says

Quote:

danMdan wrote:
It runs quiet but not totally silent, not as quiet as my Mac Mini, and does not appear to run hot.

and later on:

Quote:

What type of Mac Mini do you have, one of the latest models with a Core 2 Duo?

Exactly that -- Core 2 Duo, 160 G HDD, 2G Ram, Superdrive. It's virtually silent - the merest whisper.

I wonder about the Mac Minis now, those available on our market have different specs, I wonder if they would be as quiet too? & do they overheat etc.?

I also wonder if the different versions of EEE Box are differently silent/quiet-? Does anyone know?

johnno06 · **Posted:** Fri Oct 31, 2008 7:24 pm

i have very bad experience with eee boxes. have sold 4 to a customer for his internet cafe. 3 failed within 4 weeks of operation. turn the box on and just get a colored screen. 75% failure rate within 4 weeks. it seems to me they did not do a proper field test with the boxes.

ASUS Eee Box: Preview & Intel's Atom Benchmarked

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