If your desk is as cluttered with files, papers and empty pizza boxes like our desks, then you’re going to need a tiny PC to take up as little of that precious desktop estate as possible. Stepping forward with a footprint the size of a baby chihuahua, the Asus Eee Box is the netbook-specialists ultra-mini PC.
It’s not accompanied by a monitor, keyboard or mouse, but it does shoehorn in decent specs into a case that’s barely the size of a shoe box. Namely a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 processor, 80GB hard drive, support for 802.11n Wi-Fi and a five-card reader (SD, SDHC, MS, MS Pro, MMC).
Thanks to that 1.6GHz processor, it’s pretty fast. It’s not comparable to , say, the speeds at which we leave for the pub, but it is pretty nippy nonetheless. Unlike the company’s netbooks, Asus has given the Eee Box a quartet of USB ports (for hooking up all that equipment this doesn’t come with).
As you’ve probably gathered, the problem here is not so much what this has got, but what it hasn’t. And you can add to the list of missing peripherals a lack of optical drive and dedicated GPU. What that means is graphics are about as much cop as Sir Ian Blair.
But we can forgive the Asus Eee Box for all of its failings. Why? Have you not seen the price? You can pick up this desktop honey for around £200! If this was a robot in disguise, it’d be Bargainus Prime.
