EeeBox

My most recent purchase is for an Asus EeeBox which, at least initially, will be used as a simple web browsing machine. My main PC in the house is a custom built machine which is housed in a media centre case but the problem with this machine is the noise of the fans (the ones for the case and the graphics card primarily) so it’s not really ideal to have this running late at night. The EeeBox on the other hands runs almost silently and as an added bonus it’s uses very little power so make me feel like I’m being kinder to the environment!

Black EeeBox

The major use for the PC in our house is for web browsing and the EeeBox handles this brilliantly (using Google Chrome which is now my default browser). I still have my iTunes installation on the main PC but after the success of the last few days I’m going to look into migrating that to the EeeBox soon (starting up the main PC just to sync my iPhone is not ideal).

The size and styling of the EeeBox is fantastic (I bought the black version). It comes with a small stand (it can also be mounted on the back of a VESA compliant monitor) and it’s small dimensions mean that you can sit it on the desk to show off it’s looks or hide it somewhere out of the way where it won’t need much space.

One issue I have to resolve is how I interface with the 2 computers. I have an old switch box but this is an older PS/2 and VGA style device whereas these two newer machine use USB and DVI. I managed to pick up a Belkin Omniview KVM Switch which should have allowed me to share the monitor, audio and Keyboard/Mouse across both machines but sadly this didn’t work out. (I should have guessed when I picked it up so cheaply!)

On plugging in the power to the KVM switch (requiring power for a KVM switch was a surprise to me) I was instantly met with a very annoying beeping noise. I could get it to stop occasionally but ended up having to look further into it as it was not consistent. It turns out this was a common problem with this switch and the fix was to upgrade the firmware – via a Parallel port to ethernet plu cable that comes with the switch. Not very useful when neither of the newer machines has a parallel port! In the end I decided to cut my losses and binned the switch (most experiences I found about it were negative anyway!)

My Dell monitor has a number of inputs so have now set it up so that the main PC is plugged into the VGA port (using a VGA to DVI adapter on the PC) and the EeeBox is plugged into the DVI port and then I can simply switch between them using the button the front of the monitor. The main keyboard/mouse I use is a Microsoft Wireless setup that only requires a single USB plug on the computer. I have ordered a USB switch so I can (hopefully) plug the keyboard/mouse into it and then both computers to the other end and then switch the keyboard/mouse from computer to computer at the flick of a button.

Once that’s done I’ll probably combine the audio from both PC’s into the monitor speakers as usually only one machine will be making a noise at one time so there’s no real need for separate sound configurations.