Asus would been well-advised to check the brandname of its latest media centre PC system with a linguist before announcing the product to the world this week. According to Reg Hardware readers, Asus' Asteio brand means 'joke' in Greek.

Ah, the dangers of branding a consumer electronics product to a global audience...

A quick check with AltaVista's Babelfish confirms the fact. Enter 'joke' and activate the English-to-Greek translation yields:

asteio

which is, as near as makes no odds, Asus' media centre PC brandname.

Asus can at least console itself that it's not alone in making such a mistake. Nintendo's Wii sounds rather amusing in English, though at least it's not a real word here. We have a gut feeling 'zune' is a rude word in certain rare Hittite dialects, but since that's not Microsoft's target market, so the software giant will probably get away with it. ®

Thanks to readers Luke Kontogiannis and Dimitris Giakoumakis for the tip

Related stories

• Asus revs second-gen Lamborghini laptop (15 January 2007)
• ISP bundles £500 PC with broadband packages (13 November 2006)
• Asus to launch gamer-friendly laptops this month (13 November 2006)
• Asus kits out Lamborghini VX1 Golden Edition laptop (2 November 2006)
• Asus unveils Viiv-friendly media centre (2 November 2006)
• 'Mars', 'Jupiter' launches planned by O2, Asus (27 October 2006)
• Asus readies red, green gamer-oriented laptops? (20 October 2006)
• Asus guarantees pre-n kit will meet 802.11n standard (3 October 2006)
• Asus to update HD DVD laptop for Core 2 Duo (25 September 2006)