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Asus to offer Celeron-based Eee Box

Swapping Celeron for Atom will allow the manufacturer to offer a lower-priced Nettop, according to reports.

Michelle Thatcher Former Senior Associate Editor, Laptops
Tech expert Michelle Thatcher grew up surrounded by gadgets and sustained by Tex-Mex cuisine. Life in two major cities--first Chicago, then San Francisco--broadened her culinary horizons beyond meat and cheese, and she's since enjoyed nearly a decade of wining, dining, and cooking up and down the California coast. Though her gadget lust remains, the practicalities of her small kitchen dictate that single-function geegaws never stay around for long.
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Michelle Thatcher

Asus Eee PC Box

If you're a regular Crave reader, you know about the runaway popularity of the Asus Eee PC, the grandfather of the Netbook category. But the company's attempts to roll that success into a small-form-factor desktop, the Eee Box, have thus far fallen flat.

That hasn't stopped the company from trying to make a splash in the so-called Nettop category. According to a report in DigiTimes, Asus is readying a new version of the Eee Box that will feature a budget-minded Celeron 220 CPU instead of the Intel Atom found in earlier versions. Asus will also increase the hard-drive space in the new model, going from 80GB to 120GB.

According to the report, the processor change will drop the cost of the Eee Box to $240. The company seems to be hoping the lower price point will present a better value proposition than the previous version, which at $350 couldn't compete with similarly low-cost desktops and laptops.