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.

Some of the coolest OS features are nowhere to be found in Windows XP or Vista. Here are 18 brilliant features that Microsoft should beg for, borrow, or steal–plus tips on how you can add many of them to your PC now.

Hewlett-Packard’s revelation casts doubt over Microsoft’s claims about how many copies of Windows Vista have been sold, as HP has made clear that although a sale may be counted as ‘Vista’, it may actually be Windows XP.