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.

Available in two color options - Pure Black & Pure White, both ASUS Eee Box models are powered by Intel’s 1.6Ghz Atom processor, and feature 1GB of DDR2 RAM, an 80GB hard drive and Windows XP Home Edition.

To be clear, the Eee Box is not for sweaty frag fests or heavy duty HD video decoding. But if you have hankering for a killer kitchen PC or just an uber cheap second or third home PC that runs Linux or XP, it simply can’t be beat. Let the Eee Box knock-offs commence!

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.