Asus 2400ET All-In-One Touch Desktop Review

The keyboard, mouse, and remote control that ship with the ET2400 are shown above. We don't have much to say about the remote control other than that it works—remotes have never been optimal for controlling Windows (or most media software).

The keyboard is a different matter. The law of averages states that someone, somewhere, must like the EEE's keyboard, but it isn't us. It performs well enough, but the complete lack of a wrist-rest and the absence of any tilt leaves the user typing almost perpendicular to the work surface. The mouse is a standard, if smallish, wireless mouse--decent, but not terribly special.

Both the mouse and keyboard feel out of place when paired with a desktop, even an all-in-one. As mobile accessories, both serve admirably, but the 23.6" display on the ET2400 isn't big enough to encourage users to treat it like a small television. There's nothing wrong with either the mouse or keyboard per se, but they don't distinguish themselves and they aren't what we'd want for any sort of desktop workspace.  

The ET2400 also ships with a thorough bundle of EEE-brand software. We daresay most of it will go unused, but Asus provides links to cloud storage software, a repository of online games (no freebies that we could see, but all offered 60 minutes of demo play), and its standard suite of monitoring tools.


Video Playback:

Asus' Blu-ray player is based on a stripped down version of Cyberlink's PowerDVD. Blu-ray playback worked--mostly--but we ran into a few snags. By default, the system attempted to open Blu-ray films in Windows Media, only to report that the system couldn't handle this type of content.

Asus' own player functioned when manually selected, but our experience wasn't as smooth as we expected. We tried multiple Blu-ray discs, including Spider Man 3, Pirates of the Caribbean 2, and the most recent Star Trek movie. Peculiarities abound:  The EEE Cinema software misidentified the latest Star Trek film as one of the Bourne movies and therefore could not 'Resume' the film if it was paused—'Restart' was the only available option. Previews were full of video artifacts, although the clarity of film playback was unaffected. Driver updates did not solve this problem.

We later installed Cyberlink's PowerDVD 11 and found that program was capable of correctly identifying Star Trek (even with MoovieLink disabled). Previews, logos, warnings, and the film itself were all correctly displayed. Unlike PowerDVD, which offers a variety of configurable software effects and audio options, EEE Cinema offers virtually nothing. The ATI control panel can be used to compensate for this, at least to a certain degree.

The reason we'd ding the Asus-specific program here is that PowerDVD was able to play both movies *and* previews / logo screens, etc, without distortion. While it's true that the Asus Cinema software handled actual movies with aplomb, bugs regarding one sort of playback can be endemic of bugs elsewhere. Also, HD content like Blu-ray discs shouldn't be set to play in WMP by default—that sort of configuration will only confuse the customers for whom this system is intended.

As far as acoustics are concerned, the ET2400 IGTS is sitting pretty. We never picked up a significant amount of noise from the system, even while gaming.