Asus has released a version of its lightweight Eee PC laptop aimed at the desktop market.

The Eee Box is about the size of a hard backed book, at 222mm x 178mm x 26.9mm and weighs in at 1kg.

A 1.6GHz Atom processor is backed up with 1GB of Ram, an 80GB hard drive and Windows XP Home.

Asus said that the Eee Box is fitted with a fast boot system called Express Gate which can go from shutdown to internet ready operation in eight seconds, depending on hardware configuration.

The system has two USB ports, one PC card slot and a 802.11n Wi-Fi connection. It costs £199.

Because of its size Asus is suggesting that the computer can be mounted on the back of an LCD monitor, making it attractive in "space-poor" homes.