Following its success with the Eee PC, where it virtually founded a new class of sub-notebooks on its own, Asus has decided to try to do the same for the desktop, with the Eee Box (why waste a good brand-name?).

In many ways the Eee Box is an Eee PC without the keyboard, mouse or screen, so is the performance you can live with when travelling still sufficient when you're working from home and have room for something more substantial?

In a box reminiscent of a Mac mini, but less than half the height and mounted on its side on a screw-on stand, the Eee Box runs an Intel Atom processor at 1.6GHz and couples this to 1GB of main memory and an 80GB hard drive. External connections are mainly at the back, with sockets for DVI digital monitor, external power supply, two USB ports, network and a WiFi draft N aerial; wireless is standard on the machine.

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At the front, behind a rather flimsy, fold-out flap, are two more USB ports, jacks for microphone and headphones, and SD and MemoryStick card readers. There's no keyboard or mouse supplied with the machine, but if you use a wireless set, only one of the USB sockets need be used.

There's very little expansion potential with the Eee Box, though there are rumours of a clip-on optical drive which would be a useful addition, as the only way to get new software onto the basic machine is via a network link.

One rather nifty way of using this mini computer is to bolt it onto the back of an LCD monitor. Asus supplies a standard VESA bracket with the machine, so it should fit any display designed to fasten to a wall. This gives a complete, integrated PC in a neat form factor, with nothing to clutter the desk.

When it comes to performance, if you run standard benchmarks the results are unimpressive. The processor took over an hour and a quarter to complete a Super pi benchmark, while integer and floating point bandwidth is in the 2-2.5Gbps range; pretty unimpressive.

However, if you consider using the Eee Box for the same kind of things you would the Eee PC - web browsing, e-mail and simple word processing or spreadsheet work - then the performance is more than adequate. With the copy of Windows XP Home SP3 pre-installed, you can run Office, Works or something open source such as OpenOffice, and notice very little hesitation.

We're pretty convinced there's a demand for ultra small-footprint desktop PCs like the Eee Box. There are plenty of circumstances where space is tight, such as in a student bedroom or a home office squeezed in under the stairs. This tiny, inexpensive machine has most of the features necessary for Internet and general office work, including the performance to run them satisfactorily under Windows.