Asus has unveiled the latest member to join its EeeBox nettop family, the Ion-packing EB1501. This mini desktop not only sports a sleek new design, it is also the first EeeBox with a slot-loading DVD drive and Windows 7. Aside from using Nvidia's chipset for smoothly decoding 1080p video, the EB1501 also comes with a dual-core Atom N330 processor clocked at 1.6GHz, 2GB of DDR2-800 RAM, and a 250GB hard disk.


Other specs include 802.11n Wi-Fi and gigabit Ethernet, 4 USB 2.0 ports, eSATA, HDMI and VGA out, a multi-format card reader, and 5.1 audio -- all in all, a very solid desktop machine in a compact and nice-looking enclosure. Depending on your configuration options, the EB1501 can also have up to 4GB of RAM as well as a remote, matching keyboard/mouse combo, and a VESA mount in case you want to hide it behind your monitor.

Pricing hasn't been announced for the U.S. yet, but a base configuration should ship sometime after Windows 7's October 22 release to European customers for €399, or the equivalent of $580.