I’ve been following Asus since the launch of their Asus EEE PC 700 in 2007. The breadth and innovation of the company’s products underlines the ambitions of this company to reshape the PC (sans Apple) world by packaging the PC in a variety of new forms: UMPC, SETBOX style, Asus Radio, Video Gaming, …
While the video is in Chinese, you will get to see some great gadgets in the video: first up, of course, is the EBox. There isn’t the same level of interest in this device, but I believe it has a number of advantages that will see this become an extremely popular choice for all sorts of un (and under-) served markets: kids computing, older folks, family computing, simpler networking, classrooms, etc..
The price, the size, and the low power consumption make this a VERY attractive computer for the next generation of household computers. You could put one in EVERY classroom for a relatively inexpensive solution if you need a small language classroom with five or six of these machines; networked together, they’d be quite a cool and effective computer-skills teaching classroom.
Also, running Linux would make many aspects of maintenance relatively simple. Replacement would be the option in cases where the hard drive died, though! But at its current price, that might quite affordable! Have you considered using an EBOX for your classroom?
#1 written by TesolTeacher May 29th, 2009 at 06:29
Since this review I bought two of them: one of which works quite well, but the other had problems with its wireless card.
Kenneth