eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeBox

Picked up one today, gunna use it at work, we have an LCD on a mobile stand that needs a PC to drive it for interactive stuff. That I can bolt this to the back of it is very nice.

Paid $488 ex GST, but they can be had cheaper than that.

Intel Atom 1.6
1GB RAM
80GB HDD
gig-e
802.11b/g/n
Intel GMA 950 video
XP Home

The box! The printed outer layer slips off.


First layer. It also had a lid on top of this bit.


Lift out the eeeBox tray and you can see all the gubbins that come with it.


From left: Stand (required), VESA mount to allow it to be screwed to the back of most desktop LCD's, AC adaptor and triple prong power cable. Also comes with a UK one too. The bag has the Wifi antenna, a minijack to SPDIF adaptor, manuals and a restore DVD and support/drivers CD. You don't even get them on a $2k laptop, but on a $500 machine that doesn't even have an optical drive? Cool.


There it is! Complete with that protective film that I LOVE to pull off.


With adult human hand for scale.


Front, behind the flap. HDD light, power button, SD/MMC slot, USB, headphones, mic.


Rear. Wifi, power, DVI, USB, gig-e, SPDIF out.


First impressions:

Quiet. Very quiet. Fan goes full speed on boot up for a few seconds, but after that, you have to put you ear up to the exhaust vent to hear anything. Nice size...same size as a Wii, but about half the width. Good weight, feels solid.

Feels snappy enough after a brief play, but anything I/O heavy feels a little slow, as to be expected with a 5400rpm laptop drive. Not loaded with crapware! Acrobat Reader and ASUS Update stuff is it.

However, it also ships with something called 'ExpressGate'. What this is is a linux based quick boot environment loaded with a web browser (Firefox based), Skype, Pidgin for IM and an iPhoto like app. Talks to both the network cards and the SD reader, and also takes up a 3GB partition on the hard drive. Touted as 'instant on', it's more like about 25 seconds from boot to browsing, but hey, it seems nifty enough. I've now vaped it since we wont be needing it, but could be useful in some cases. I understand that some standard ASUS motherboards come with this functionality now.

Haven't tried it to see how it behaves with HD media yet as I'm busy replacing XP Home with something a little more useful, but I will be!

Heh i ordered one today for work as a thin client... and to satisfy some curiosity as im thinking about upgrading my sff (via) m-itx box with the atom m-itx MB.

These boxes definately have their place i think.
The expressgate is becoming standard on the rest of the Asus range too. Its supposed to be 7 sec's to boot i think (theoretical). Good for just getting on the net.
Pity it doesnt come with Asus' latest gadget an "Air ioniser" that they are putting into all their new Laptop range
gotta love that.

I saw these in a local PC shop, they look pretty decent

kris, please report on how 720p HD media runs on the CPU

cheers

the answer to 720p warezmonkey media playing is sadly a big no.

lesser media plays fine, but big fail on x264.

pegs CPU at 100% and is still a bit jerky.

I wonder if the dual core atom would handle it?

hard to say really. this single core quite close i think with the 720p stuff, so maybe. until it actually lands however....


anyway, there was method to the madness! tada!






That silver dealio is a Mimio. A cheap version of an interactive whiteboard.

http://www.mimio.com/products/interactive/

Can't imagine why your school gets broken into so frequently, kris_b

You must have equipment in each classroom worth more than most of your families' annual income.

awesome setup, nice media center

kris, can we hook up a DVI cable from the CPU to the LCD TV with HDMIl as I have a DVI to HDMI cable so made me wonder.

We're actually not toooo unlucky. We did have a little bit of a bad run, but the bulk of it was caused by idiot teachers being too stupid and leaving their laptops on their desks in full view in a wide open classroom.

Schools as a whole are targeted because thieves know we ALL have expensive, easily fenced stuff that P-dealers like, such as projectors and laptops.

Big ticket items like this are secured/hidden after hours.

But on the whole no, we're not that unusual. 2 x $600 computers in each classroom is hardly overboard.

Why do you think they make a DVI to HDMI cable?

I just got pwned

Looks good. a little on the slow side for some things, especially windows update which is the same issue as the via m-itx comp i already have.

On the plus side it does everything i expected/needed and the price was acceptable.