Friday, May 08, 2009

Asus Eee PC Box B202

I've got my Asus Eee PC Box B202 for my mini project at home. Price here in Japan cost for me ¥39,800 + Bluetooth keyboard and a mouse. There are many reviews about the box, so I just wanted to share things that nobody usually talking. :-)

Packaging entirely sucks. It is ripped off from Apple packaging, but as usually it happens, copied wrong. They copied even matt paper and tried to put as minimum as possible graphics on it. Still, they screw it up, having lack of feeling of any kind of style, poor cutting quality etc. However, the price tells everything: they're done it by an axe, I understand... that's fine. But the most funny is a size. I took photos of the thing, so everybody can consider it themselves how "green" it is and how "well" it fits to the whole global warming question, wasting space of transportation, fuel for airplanes etc. Also it is damn heavy, in compare to MacBook package. I have no idea how it rendered to be that heavy, but I was quite surprised, dragging the thing to the home.

The Eee PC Box is a small Intel Atom-based machine with 1GB of RAM, 80GB 2.5" hard drive disk (16GB SSD would be much better here, by the way) and 1.6GHz CPU Intel Atom processor. CPU itself is not any fast. The beauty of the machine is a size and low voltage. It is very quiet (I mean silent), great for all this file-server thing in the small office or home. This machine is also really great for a disk-less thin client terminal. The size is like a regular O'Reilly book:


It is even smaller than my aluminum MacBook:


Now funny things begin. I still have a package box from my MacBook. I've got this in a shop exactly like this, as you might see in a photo (left). And that's how internal package of the Eee Box looks like (it is also thicker):


You think it is finished? No way. They put this box in another, external box that looks like this (why?? why??). The box is so big that you additionally can put a bottle of wine, pack of donuts and a small color printer:


And I also got a set of input devices: a Bluetooth keyboard and a mouse. Both are... well... cheap, you know... and I am not gonna use it anyway, since I have lots of keyboards at home. But... but... look at that size of package!! It is literally twice wider than the machine itself ("We don't know about Times New Loman existence for Engrish part for mice combos"):


...and, surprisingly, thrice thicker than the machine itself! Would I expect there five keyboards and a dozen of mouses?


Of course, by an old-good tradition, I took these stickers on a flush cistern of my toilet and now the natural excrement disposal place is labeled to be designed for a Windows XP. :-)


No way, the Eee PC box is gonna run OpenSolaris instead.

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