Uh, maybe not.

Tax Day came and went, but neither the Eee Box B204 nor B206 was released in the U.S. So much for taking Asus at their word. Stay tuned for more on this.

Eee Box B204/B206 U.S. Release Date: April 15

Looks like eco-nerds in America will actually have something to celebrate on Tax Day this year. I called Asus' US Sales department and asked them when the Eee Box B204/B206 will be released. Their answer: April 15. Finally. No word on price, though. This gets the ball rolling for nettops with HD graphics chipsets. Asus is once again ahead of the game. I'm probably going to hold out for their nettop with a 330 dual core chip (B208?). Either way, hooray for Asus.

Atom 330: The future of Green PC's.

My Asus Eee PC 901 is the first Intel-based system that I've ever owned (all others were AMD-based). As I've mentioned before on this blog, I'm more that pleased with the amount of punch the 901 packs with such a tiny carbon footprint. By that I mean that it sips electricity instead of gulping it like other larger notebooks. The 901 is powered by the Atom N270, the most common chip in netbooks today. What this chip can accomplish with 4W of power is staggering. Even though the N270 netbooks use the crappy GMA 950 graphics chipset and slow hard drives or solid state drives (upgradable), I'm still digging them.

Sometime this year, the netbooks and nettops of the world will be transitioning from the N270 to the Atom 330 (8W power consumption), which is, for all intents and purposes, a dual core N270. This means that low-power, or green, systems will be on par with some desktops with regard to overall throughput. While this is rather rad in and of itself, many vendors like Asus and Dell plan on combining the 330 with a discreet graphics chipset like the new Nvidia Ion or the ATI HD 3000 or 4000 series. Oh my. That means that we can have green PC's with twice the CPU power and 10 TIMES the graphics muscle, AKA full 1080P video decoding, AND 10 TIMES less power consumption than a full size desktop, at a miniscule price? Wow. It's gonna be a good summer.

My Future Touchscreen Jukebox: Eee Top

We all have dreams. One of mine is to have a touchscreen jukebox hanging on the wall of a room where I'm hosting a party. Just like in so many bars. This particular dream of mine came one step closer to reality a short while ago when Asus released the Eee Top. (Side note: Asus, in my opinion, is second only to Apple in the amount of original, innovative and downright amazing PC-related devices released in the last couple years. Keep up the good work, Asus.) The plan is thus: get one of these beauties and install any one of a number of touchscreen jukebox programs so that my future party guests can boogie down to their own soundtrack, ensuring good times and smiling faces.

At less than $600 (and sure to fall quickly), one can have an all-in-one XP touchscreen machine that looks great to boot. Here's the specs:




Nice. What more can you ask for? As soon as these babies hit $300 (I'm guessing December), I'm all over it.

mp3HD: You're kidding, right?

This has to be the dumbest idea I've heard in a while. The genuises at Thomson decided that instead of audio software and device manufacturers supporting the numerous existing lossless audio codecs we have (FLAC, ALAC, WMA Lossless, etc.) in addition to mp3, that it would be a good idea to take mp3s and their lossless counterparts and COMBINE THEM into one gargantuan file! They say MAXIMUM COMPATIBILITY!

Hello? Disk space calling Thomson.

Why the hell can't device manufacturers support mp3 AND a lossless format. It doesn't really matter which lossless format. Hell, some already do support lossless, including the iPod. Computationally, to decode a lossless format, its trivial. It may suck slightly more juice than an mp3, but battery technology is only getting better. One could argue for the mp3HD format by saying that disk space is getting cheaper and that the overall size per file is not that much bigger. I'd counter that by saying that people's music collections are also growing, and a 20% increase per file adds up. We aren't carrying around terabyte disks in our pockets, OK? All this, and mp3HD requires a new plugin for PCs and a new firmware update for portables. Not compatible? FAIL FAIL FAIL!!!!

Prediction: this format sinks faster than a lead submarine.