Photos: Asus Eee Top all-in-one, touch-sensitive PC

Remember the Eee Monitor we talked about last year? It's back, and it's got a new name. Welcome, friends, to the Eee Top: the world's first -- as far as we're aware -- all-in-one nettop.

The Eee Top is reminiscent of the all-in-one Apple iMacs and HP TouchSmart PCs -- only smaller and cheaper. It has a 15.6-inch touch-sensitive display, although it's not capable of sensing multi-touch inputs in the same way as the iPhone.

Inside, it uses a 1.6GHz Atom CPU, 1GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive, Intel integrated graphics, Windows XP, a 1.3-megapixel webcam, digital array mics, gigabit Ethernet and 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi -- all par for the Eee course.

According to Play.com, which is taking pre-orders of the Eee Top as we speak, the system has six USB ports, an SD/SDHC/MS/MS Pro memory card reader and three audio ports for line-in, mic and line-out. Software includes Eee Cinema, which looks like Windows Media Center. You also get StarOffice, Adobe Reader 8.0, Skype and a 90-day trial of Norton Internet Security.

The Eee Top comes with a wired keyboard and mouse and even has ExpressGate -- a limited alternative to Windows, which boots in as little as 10 seconds. With this, users can quickly access multimedia files, the Internet and Skype.

Play.com is asking £399 for the Eee Top, which isn't bad considering you get a 15.6-inch touchscreen into the bargain. We can imagine it makes an ideal second PC, a kids' computer, or something geeks might want to use as a central control panel for their digital home.

We'll have a full review as soon as we can pry one off Asus. In the meantime, check the pictures over the page. -Rory Reid

Update: A full review of the Eee Top can be found here.

Say what you want about it, but it's a sleek-looking machine. The speaker panel below the screen has a Denon logo on it, which bodes well.

The Eee Cinema software looks reminiscent of Windows Media Center. Given its touch-sensitivity, we'd like to set this thing up in the living room, hook it up to some speakers and a big screen, and use it as a way of accessing multimedia.