Review: Asus EEE Box
I’ve replaced two HP e-Vectra computers (P3-600s) that were getting long in the tooth with an EEE Box B202 running Windows XP Home.
This is a really nice machine that draws very little power. I’ve got it set up as a file server for exchanging files at home, a place to store backups, runs my weather station (using WxServer) and can be used as a web browser when playing with D-Star.
I was a little surprised to find that the computer came bunded with a mouse and keyboard. The keyboard, while being badged Asus, is identical to my Logitech ‘Ultra Flat Keyboard‘, which retails for around $40 by itself.
There is some bundled software (MS Works, Sun StarOffice) which clogs things up. I removed Acrobat Reader, Works, Powerpoint Viewer and StarOffice. All I needed to put on was FoxitPDF (much lighter weight than Acrobat Reader), ConTEXT (best editor ever), Opera 9 (Firefox is getting too porky) and TightVNC.
Some benchmarking was in order, so HyperPI (which is a front end to Super PI that batches up jobs for multi-core CPUs) and CrystalMark 2004R3 came to the rescue.
- Running two Super PIs took 1’54.3″ in total on the EEE Box (Intel Atom 1.6GHz), 0’58.8″ on my Fujitsu P1620 (Intel Core2 Duo ULV 1.2GHz), 1’5.9″ on my Sony Vaio S38GPB (Intel Pentium M 1.8GHz) and a whopping 7’0.8″ on the e-Vectra (Pentium III 0.6GHz).
- CrystalMark ALU scores were 5298 for the EEE, 10131 for the P1620, 6457 for the Vaio and 2100 for the e-Vectra.
- CrystalMark FPU scores were 4647 for the EEE, 10718 for the P1620, 8030 for the Vaio and 2241 for the e-Vectra.
- CrystalMark Mem scores were 4150 for the EEE, 6445 for the P1620, 4316 for the Vaio and 858 for the e-Vectra.
- CrystalMark HDD scores were 5454 for the EEE (2.5″ SATA), 2815 for the P1620 (1.3″ PATA), 5052 for the Vaio (2.5″ SATA) and 6192 for the e-Vectra (3.5″ PATA).
All in all, the Atom based computer packs a lot of punch given the small amount of power the CPU consumes. The accessory chips actually draw more power! I took some power measurements using a power quality meter, and the draw from the wall socket (@ 240V) was 16W when idling and 19W with the CPU at 100% usage. The e-Vectra machines each drew around 50W, so this is a fair saving. Interestingly, the e-Vectras and the EEE Box are powered through an external 19V PSU capable of around 3A. This means that the use of a 12V laptop power adapter would make it easy to operate one of these off a DC power source. Not sure what you’d use for a monitor though, but for a headless system it might have some use.
In: Computing, Toys · Tagged with: Review
