Computex 2014: The ASUS Booth Tour

Education and Business

One element of ASUS’ business that we as consumers tend not to realize is the business-to-business aspect.  These are corporate clients interested in an ASUS solution to their IT infrastructure.  On show were two sides of the same coin – the models geared towards education (typically lower performance parts but backed up by security) and business models that require higher performance or specific functionality.

Education based PCs have to be able to allow multiple users to interact and sign-in, and are often controlled by a single machine in the IT supervisors office.  The model that caught my attention was a unit based on Bay Trail-D, the quad-core Celeron J1900:

The VESA mount it straight design is a stark difference to the big desktops back when I was in high school, suggesting the student can focus more on what is on the screen rather than a wide range of noises coming from the box underneath the desk.

As mentioned, another element is security, such as students attaching unauthorized devices, or teachers needing to disable the workstations in the classroom in order to get attention.  ASUS software for this from a central terminal was on display, but also for the more digital signage aspect (moving into business), there is per-unit software too:

One unit on the business side caught my attention essentially because the CPU it listed (i7-4785T) is a Haswell refresh version of a 35W CPU that is not on sale to the public.  It was housed in a small chassis capable of add-ons such as an ODD:

The left hand side of this 1-liter unit contains the whole system (which can be VESA mounted) whereas the modular nature means that the business can add in other components such as ODD and storage to the devices that need it.