ASUS's Eee Box B202 small form factor PC

When Asus released the Eee PC, it introduced a brand-new class of notebook to the market. Asus's goal seemed fairly simple: to create a notebook as inexpensive and portable as possible. In doing so, it recognized our most common computing tasks—Internet use and word processing—and used those tasks as a baseline for the hardware. The result was a machine designed around a "waste not, want not" sort of philosophy coupled with a recognition that oftentimes, notebooks are used not as a primary computer, but as a secondary companion.

Released at an attractively low $299 price point, the Eee PC was such a runaway success that it led Asus to spin off an entire Eee division and brand, and inspired countless imitators from major competitors such as Dell, HP, and Acer. Recently, even Lenovo has gotten in on the action, announcing the IdeaPad S10 as the latest competitor in this new class of notebook popularly dubbed the "netbook."

Emboldened by the success of the Eee PC, and with its new Eee division blossoming, Asus seeks to do for the desktop market what it did for notebooks. Many of the ideas the Eee PC was built around also apply to desktops, so it stands to reason a similar bare-essentials approach could be just as effective in a small form factor PC. Thus, the Eee Box was born.