14 DAY TRIAL // Though Acer can be said to have been among the most active IT giants on the PC front over the past few days, ASUS did not exactly slack off either. In fact, the PC maker has its own collection of recently showcased netbooks and ultrathins, among other things, and it seems as though the string of official introductions is not over just quite yet. Now that the mobile PC segment is being taken care of, the Taiwanese outfit has moved on to the desktop front, although it still retains its focus on compactness.
ASUS has just begun selling, on the European market at least, a pair of nettops that go by the names of EeeBox EB1501U and EB1012U. Some consumers may even remember these products were actually showcased at this year's CeBIT electronics show in Hanover, Germany. Like all nettops, they seek to provide basic computing capabilities in a very compact form factor.
The EeeBox EB1501U and EB1012U nettops run on the Intel Atom N330 dual-core central processing unit and utilize the first-generation NVIDIA ION platform, which includes the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics solution.
Additionally, each boasts 2GB of RAM and a hard disk drive with a storage capacity of 250GB. Other specifications include web connectivity via 10/100 LAN and 802.11 b/g/n/ WiFi, as well as a multi-card reader and HDMI and D-Sub video outputs.
No doubt end-users will rationalize that the spec sheet, so far, has nothing particularly noteworthy, but what they may not know is that ASUS decided to throw in a USB 3.0 port for good measure on the EB1012U, as well as two USB connectors and a DVD drive on the EB1501U. Now available in Europe, the two siblings are priced at 379 Euro and 429 Euro, respectively, and have black and white color options.