Living with the eeeBox

Well it's been a very long time since I last posted - that must be something to do with a new family arrival I would imagine.. ;-)

I thought I'd add a few short posts about things I've been keeping an eye on, and comment on roughly a year's use of my Asus EeeBox B202s.

Firstly the only limitation that I've noticed of the B202 is its lack of full HD capability. 720p tends to playback ok, however anything greater than that is very jerky. Asus have addressed this with their new EeeBox arrivals (B204/B206). The additon of an HD compatible graphics card seems to have resolved that issue, whilst otherwise sticking with the same hardware.

Unfortunately Asus seem not to have been able to resist the temptation to increase the price of these new models. One of the key selling points in my opinion was the price of the original. The new models go for around £290 which although still not bad for an entertainment PC, for me is just a little too high.

Much like the Asus EeePC netbook however, other manufacturers are now catching up, most notably Acer with their Aspire Revo. This machine is similar in concept to the Asus, however it ships with an HD compatible card already included. There are two main specifications, one with Linux and a 20Gb SSD drive, and one with Vista (yes, the graphics hungry Vista) and a 160Gb HDD. The Linux machine was an amazing £149 when it was released, although reviewers were very critical about the SSD which performed poorly.

Subsequently, Acer have released the Linux version with a 160Gb drive (same spec as the Vista model) for £159 (at time of writing). Now that is a bargain as far as I can see. It's going to be hard to resist that to get some BluRay viewing on the main TV!