Asus announced on Tuesday that they are releasing two new versions of their Eee Box, with some new features.
The new versions have a high definition hardware decoder (a Radeon 3400), HDMI out and a remote. The hardware decoder should improve performance, possibly making this a decent choice for a HTPC solutions. While the hardware and software seem better, I’d like to see it come in other colors, so it doesn’t look so much like a Wii. No word on pricing or availability yet, although we can reasonably put it above $300 with the added cost of the video card.
Surprise, surprise. The underpowered nettops aren’t selling so well. Sales are lagging so much that Asus is benching the Intel Atom for the more powerful Celeron CPU in an upcoming Eee Box release. The hard drive is also getting bumped to 120GB from 80GB. Overall, Asus still sees a future over this mini-desktops with 100,000 – 200,000 selling this year and over a million next as it the computer enters new markets. To bad nettops are still sorely underpowered by today’s standard.
Remember those unfortunate Eee Boxes we mentioned last week that were shipped with an active virus on the hard drive? Well, Asus is being a big boy about it and has ordered a recall. That restores some of the cred they lost last week, but I’m still wary. Apparently the infection came from a USB stick they were using to test the things.
Luckily (or unluckily, depending on how you look at it) they’d only sold a couple hundred of the things before this minor calamity, so there’s not too much damage to pay for out of pocket.
One of big trends in personal computers right now, are small notebooks that can handle basic computing tasks like browsing the Web and sending e-mail. Intel is hoping that this trend carries over to desktops, since it just released a system board to complement is Atom processor.
The Intel D945GCLF board features a 1.6GHz Atom 230 processor, GMA 950 graphics, and USB 2.0 for about 80 bucks.
This new chipset will fit nicely in the ultra-compact VoomPC enclosure or ant thing else the size of a typical notebook. Intel is calling these new ultra portable desktops Netops.
Nettops just like their Netbook brothers will be low power and low cost. The main difference between the two is Nettops offer more options for expansion, ports, and greater flexibility.
