Asus eee Family

If you look back through the history of computers you'll notice that the technological pendulum swings between centralised and decentralised computing power.

However, in a sense, desktop computing has plateaued. Processing power has reached a level where it's no longer holding back your personal productivity. As a result the processing power of a two-year-old system is more than adequate for the majority of computer users. Moore's Law stipulated that processing power would double every couple of years while the price stayed constant.

That brings us to the items under review today. Asus completely disrupted the notebook computer market with the release of the original Eee PC. Even though it was slow, compared to cutting edge processors of the day, it had more than enough grunt to satisfy the needs of most of us. It shipped with Open Office and with a mature operating system and comms software including a web browser, email client, Skype and a suite of other handy applications.

Rather than resting on its laurels, Asus has continued to develop the Eee PC family. The newest members of the Eee family are the Eee PC 1000h and Eee Box B202.

eee Box B202.

As the name suggests the Eee Box B202 isn't another mini-notebook. Rather it's one of the tiniest desktop PCs we've ever seen. It's about the same size as a hardcover novel but about half the thickness. You can simply lay it flat on your desk or there's a small stand supplied, which screws onto the base so the Eee Box can sit on its side with no danger of it tipping over.

However, the most interesting placement is to hide it behind your LCD monitor. The Eee Box comes with a mounting kit that mates with the standard VESA mounting holes on the back of most LCD monitors. That way the Eee Box doesn't take up any valuable desk space. It only took us about five minutes to mount it on the back of a 15" LCD, where it didn't interfere with the screen's operation in any way.

The display is connected to a DVI port on the rear of the Eee Box. If you're planning to recycle an older screen that only has a VGA connector, Asus supplies an adaptor that worked perfectly with our test screen. (That means that the DVI port also puts out an analog signal that VGA monitors can use.) Resolutions of up to 1920 by 1200 are supported.

Other bits and pieces connect via USB with four available ports. There are two at the back, adjacent to the DVI connector and two at the front. Such an arrangement means that you're not constantly reaching around the back of the unit to connect occasionally used devices such as cameras. There's also a combined SD/ SDHC/MS/MS Pro slot for memory cards.

Given that the Eee Box isn't running the fastest processor it comes with Windows XP as that OS's hardware needs are more conservative than those of Microsoft's latest operating system. The CPU is an Intel Atom clocked at 1.6GHz. The Atom family of processors are designed to balance energy efficiency and performance. There's 1GB of RAM supplied which can be increased to 2GB.

In order to minimise the time taken between start up and productivity the Eee Box ships with two operating systems. When you hit the power button, a simple operating system, dubbed Express Gate, starts up. It provides access to a web browser, Skype, chat, online games and your photos in around thirty seconds. That means that if you want to quickly look at something on the Internet, the browser is ready in just a few seconds. The downside of this mode is that nothing you do is saved, so next time you launch Express Gate it won't remember any of the websites you visited. Of course, that could be a good thing sometimes.

If you don't do anything when Express Gate's on the screen, Windows XP will load. You can then proceed to install your favourite Windows applications to the 80GB hard drive, but you'll need to supply a separate standalone CD/DVD player connected via USB - there's isn't one built-in to the Eee Box.

Windows performance was quite good. Windows XP started quickly - it was ready to use from a cold boot in about a minute - and was responsive when opening programs, switching between applications and carrying out everyday tasks such as retrieving email, browsing the web and creating documents and spreadsheets.

Connectivity

Keeping connected was simple as well. If you prefer a wired connection, there's gigabit Ethernet. Wireless was covered with the latest high-speed 802.11 n WiFi with support for WPA2 encryption so that you can keep your data as secure as current standards allow. We connected to our test LAN without any problems through both Windows XP and Express Gate.

One of the things we like about all the Eee PCs we've tested is that if something should go wrong or you need to start over and recover your system to the original factory settings you can do this in about 20 minutes. The Eee Box hides away some disk space as a system recovery partition. By following a simple procedure, we were able to restore our test system to factory defaults.

The Asus Eee Box B202 with keyboard and mouse retails for $499 and is also available in a bundle with a 16" LCD screen for $599.

Eee PC 1000h

The Eee PC 1000h is the largest member of Asus' Eee PC notebook family. With a 10" display and larger keyboard than its smaller siblings, it addresses the main usability issues of its predecessors.

Many of the specifications mirror those of the Eee Box but there are a few significant differences. Firstly, the Eee PC 1000h is a mini-notebook computer. The screen has a resolution of 1024x800 making it adequate for reading an A4 page without the need to scroll from side to side with the trackpad.

Communications get a boost over the Eee Box with the addition of Bluetooth. We're finding that more and more business people are using Bluetooth to share files and connect mobile phones to their notebooks for data synchronisation and Internet access so this is a great addition.

Moving up to a 10" display and larger keyboard has come at a weight cost for the Eee PC 1000h. Unlike the 700 and 900 series which weighed in at less than 1 kg, the Eee PC 1000h tips the scales at 1.45kg.

Connecting peripherals is easy through the three USB ports. There's a VGA connector for an external display and a combined SD/SDHC/ MS/MS Pro slot for copying photos from your digital camera's memory card. Networking is covered by 10/100 Ethernet and 802.11n WiFi. Like many notebook computers, the Eee PC 1000h has a 1.3MP camera mounted in the bezel above the screen for desktop video-conferencing. There's a microphone in the lower part of the screen's surround that does a reasonable job in video conferences.

The Eee PC 1000h is designed to be used whilst travelling and where ready access to a power point might not be possible. Asus claims that the Eee PC 1000h's battery will last about seven hours. There's even a viral marketing campaign that has a bunch of young ladies dancing, with the Eee PC user having the most energy and being able to dance for longer than the others.

The problem with testing battery life in order to see what the maximum time comes to is that it hardly ever represents real-world use. If the screen's set to its dimmest settings, there's no WiFi or Bluetooth in use and the processor isn't being taxed then a longer run time should be possible with almost any notebook. With the Eee PC 1000h, we tested the unit by carrying it through a typical workday of meetings, working on a train and web browsing over WiFi. We found that a four hour life was achievable.

However, if we watched a full screen video, a task that pushes the CPU and display to their limits, then the battery life fell to between two and three hours.

The Eee PC 1000h has a recommended price of $699 although street prices can be discounted to around $589.

Purchasing Decisions

For us, the proof of the pudding comes in the recommendation. If a friend was contemplating buying one of these devices - how would we advise them? After all, this is the Melbourne PC User Group and our goal is to help each other.

We can see the Eee Box finding a place in many homes and small offices. Given the $429 purchase price, a home network with two or three Eee Boxes and a decent NAS for centralised storage would be a very functional arrangement. However, if you crave lots of grunt for playing the latest games then the Eee Box B202 is not suitable.

When it comes to the Eee PC 1000h, it's a more difficult recommendation. It's a very good unit but there's a lot of competition in the laptop market around that price-point.

There are lighter machines that cost more and larger machines that cost less. It really boils down to the personal preferences of the buyer. See www.asus.com.au for more information.

Note: Anthony Caruana© Permission to copy or quote extracts from this article may only be done with the written permission of the author.

Reprinted from the December 2008 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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