By Martin Vedris

SYDNEY: The Eee Box mini-desktop PC is the latest addition to the rapidly growing Eee PC family. It is shipping now to Australian dealers and will be available through retailers in four to five weeks at RRP$429.

Measuring just 22 cm x 18 cm x 2.5 cm (approximately one litre of space), it has a very small footprint. It will also come with a mounting kit to mount it behind the monitor to save even more desk space.

Asus is claiming just seven seconds from boot up to surfing the net, using what Asus calls its ‘Express Gate’ fast boot technology. It has an Intel Atom Atom N270 1.6GHz processor, 802.11n Wi Fi, an 80GB hard drive and 1GB memory.

On its website, Asus says it has a thermal solution incorporating what it calls a unique heat dissipation module with the AI fan, which Asus claims results in quiet operation at 26 db (as a comparison, whispering is measured at 40 db).

Asus is also claiming a 90 per cent power consumption reduction compared to full-sized desktop PC.

It has two USB ports, a card reader that can read SD, SDHC, Mini SD and Micro SD through adapter and it will run the Windows XP Home Edition operating system.

[Tue 05/08/2008 11:59:29]

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