As with the Eee PC netbooks, the price for the Eee Box B202, which was released in Australia this week, is a head-turner: $429 with Windows XP. Early October will see the arrival of a Xandros Linux version, although Asus has not yet announced the price or whether there will be any difference in specification between this and the XP model.

The Asus Eee Box B202, which goes on sale in just over a month, should work well as a media extender or a lightweight email/Web machine. It will have Intel’s Atom processor, at 1.6GHz, 1Gb of RAM, an 80Gb hard drive and Windows XP Home Edition.