Short Version: We now have so much storage in our homes that we could probably, each of us, start our own Rapidshare service. But how do we get all that data to the other machines on our network or, better yet, out onto the Internet?

Devices like the Iomega iConnect allow us to place storage space on our internal networks and expose that data to the world, as needed. However, the iConnect also creates a local iTunes share, adds a Time Machine back-up location, and performs a few other tricks all for $99. While it’s not perfect, it’s pretty cool.

Features:

• Four USB ports
• iTunes/Time Machine support
• Printer support
• Wireless

Pros:

• Shares data locally and with the world
• Compact
• Built-in Ethernet port

Cons:

• iTunes sharing not selective
• Set-up a bit wonky
• Doesn’t work with Drobo

The Iomega iConnect Wireless is, in short, a NAS without drives. You can stuck up to four devices onto this thing and even print wireless over your network. When you need to grab a file from one of your drives – and if you’re like me, you have plenty – you just connect to that drive. When you take the drive out of the network it disappears. Add it again and it reappears. The system also offers a remote access service with your own private URL mapped to the iConnect.

The device is fairly easy to set up. You connect to a network, run the enclosed software, and add a disk. As soon as a disk is plugged in it appears as a share on your network. A click and you’re in.

Setup is very straightforward. The desktop UI is barebones and the web UI isn’t much more complex. It isn’t for the average user but you could set it up for Grandma and tell her how to watch her soaps. Besides, it has a Torrent client built right in so she can DL her things on the DL.

For $99 you get a lot of features. Is it better than something like the Netgear Stora? That depends on how many loose drives you have in your collection. If you need to get your data online in a hurry, however, this is a good solution.

In the comments for our quick look one reader, Bryan, found that the device doesn’t support the Drobo, which is a problem. It also seems to only support FAT, FAT32, and NTFS, which could be a problem for larger files. However – and I haven’t tested this – most devices like this will handle large files thanks to the sharing properties and protocols used. The disk format seems to be invisible to OS X.

Product Page: Iomega iConnect

There’s a bit of a controversy in the BitTorrent community, friends. Two rather prominent, so-called private trackers, whose names I will not mention “just because,” have announced that they will be banning Vuze, the former Azureus, one of the elder statesmen of the BitTorrent protocol. Say what you will about the direction Vuze took—I hated it—but there isn’t a more powerful torrent client under the sun. Make no mistake about it: it is an important loss, and one of the bigger developments is the recently quiet world of BitTorrent.

The decision was taken because of the potential for Vuze to be tampered with—it was a hassle to ensure that Vuze stats were on the up and up. Nothing is more vital to the success of private BitTorrent sites than accurate stat tracking. What do you want, chaos?

It’s a valid complaint, to a point: you cannot run a BitTorrent site with the threat of users gaming the system. Private sites usually operate on the upload-to-download ratio system: you’re required to keep your ratio above a certain number in order to keep your account in good standing. So, you’ve uploaded 20GB of data and downloaded 15GB of data, giving you a ratio of 1.33. Now, if you were to somehow tamper with the way your BitTorrent client reports stats, you could rig it so that it looks like you’ve uploaded 50GB and downloaded only 10GB, the site would suffer.

How often that has actually happened, who knows? I do know this: if you’re tampering with your clients’ stats you should be deported.

The sites in question now recommend Windows users use uTorrent; Mac users uses Transmission or uTorrent; and Linux users use rTorrent. It’s a peculiar decision.

Popular because of its simplicity and small footprint, uTorrent is a closed-source application, and one point was linked with the MPAA and RIAA. You’d think that people who were engaging in wanton copyright infringement would be a little more prudent with their activities, but far be it from me to question people’s decision-making skills.

The Windows version of uTorrent is far more mature than the Mac version. One feature you won’t find in the Mac version of uTorrent is RSS, something that’s been around seemingly forever.

Transmission is another client that’s popular because of its small footprint. (If you’re seeding on a dedicated box, or have a system with a decent amount of memory, having a small footprint is essentially irrelevant. I used to run Azureus 24/7, and never noticed my machine slowing down.) Again, it’s on the simple side, so people who want to “set it and forget it” will be right at home.

I don’t know, it sounds like I’m pro-Vuze here. I don’t give a damn; I use Usenet for my escapades. I will say, I did the majority of my torrenting—I barely torrent these days—using Azureus/Vuze, so it’s a little sad to see it being pushed out like this.

Still, if it’s for the good of the sites in question, then so be it.

Short Version: HP sure knows how to make a Windows Home Server. The company has been at it for years now and the latest model does just about everything better than the previous models. That’s how it’s suppose to be.

Cons

• Overpriced for storage size
• HP software bordering on bloatware status

Features

• Intel Pentium Dual Core 2.5 GHz 64-bit CPU
• 1.5 TB of included hard drive space
• OS X Time Machine support
• HP Media Collector
• MSRP of $699

Review:

If you’ve been following along with previous versions of the HP MediaSmart Server, you know what the device does. It runs Microsoft’s Windows Home Server, but HP equipped it with a slightly different user interface to make it accessible to the non-tech crowd. Nearly anyone looking for a backup and central storage solution should be able to use this guy.

Instead of the stark WHS setup screen, new users can use HP’s software pack that guides them through setting up remote backups, assigning permissions to users, and finding media spread out over a network. It still has the same media collecting, iPhone-streaming and transcoding software in previous models, but the Media Collector works a lot better on Macs now.

What is new is the dramatically more powerful machine and better OS X support.The latest builds also ditches low voltage, and low power, CPUs in favor of a 2.5 GHz Dual Core Pentium. Boy does it help, too. I’ve been using WHS for a while now and it’s just not a backup device for me.

My torrent client lives on the box and unRARing huge files takes time on an Atom or Celeron processor, but the Pentium speeds things up a lot. The 2GB of memory also helps dramatically when running, let’s say, a torrent client, a couple of DLNA servers, and iTunes for the Home Sharing function. The hardware updates made this server a respectable little box.

HP started with the OS X support last January, but it wasn’t the greatest. The backup didn’t allow for a full restore and users still had to search out third-party solutions to access the device remotely via OS X.

But no more. Now OS X can be fully backed up and restored just like a PC by using a separate restore disc. It works just like it’s supposed to and is a valid alternative to Apple’s own backup device, the Time Capsule.

Plus, the server now ships with a OS X WHS management tool. It’s essentially a repacked remote desktop client, but it gets the job done. Because of these updates, an HP MediaSmart server can live comfortably on an all-Mac network.

All this extra software HP has thrown in is bordering on intrusive though. Window Home Server is an amazing system all by itself and anyone that’s been around computers for a while should be able to use it without any extra help. The HP stuff is cool, but to be honest, I never used it past simple testing.

I would love to see an installation or setting to turn off the HP software, but that won’t happen. HP needs to justify why its servers cost a bunch more than other option, which is really my only beef with the EX495. It’s too expensive for the amount of storage you get.

Outside of the extra HP software that a lot of people might not use and the more powerful hardware, you can get countless other WHS for far less. It seems obvious to me that the most important buying point of a file server is the storage capacity. You can expand the storage capacity to nearly anything you want with the HP MediaSmart line, but for $699 I expect to start with more than 1.5TB. The Acer easyStore costs $389 at Newegg and comes with a 1TB drive installed. For $750 you can build a 5TB system around the Acer using 2TB hard drives, which is a lot better deal if can live without the extra HP software (you probably can).

The HP MediaSmart EX495 is a quality rig. I don’t have anything against the system besides the aforementioned pricing. If you don’t mind paying a premium for software, buy it without hesitation.

Product Page: HP MediaSmart EX495

Giveaway: Want this server? Well, not this used one, but rather a brand new one? Yeah, I have one to give away. Click over to this post for all the details.

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Its Pretty Simple just Download the Torrent Client from  and come back and download the desired Torrent and boom you’re all set double click on that Torrent and you’re on your way to Download the DVD Ripped Porn Movie at  and please if you appreciate our work try to make a donation, Paypal at Our VIP service allows you to access exclusive site features such as a private VIP forum, bannerless browsing, user level identification before your name, live instant messenger, access to trailers, site customization and more! The MoviesPlanet VIP service is the premier service for all movie enthusiasts! As well as the basic Movies Planet basic services, your VIP membership will allow you to experience Movies Planet on a whole new level!You will have 30 days of unlimited access to this site, which allows you to download as many videos as you want for that 30 day period.

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The MvixBox 2-bay high performance NAS / media server is a 3-in-1 solution for storing media files, operating as a media server, and facilitating file transfer. These features are already available in other options, such as the DViCo TViX M-6500A, but the MvixBox is a more affordable solution that also offers the bonus of dual drive bays.  The functionality could also be achieved by buying a home PC, installing a server OS onto it, and connecting it to the network. However, chances are that even if you manage to get this working without problems, it would cost quite a bit more than even the DViCo TViX M-6500A.

Understanding the needs of small businesses and home users, MvixUSA has come up with a very attractive solution. The MvixBox offers many of the features consumers have been asking for in a network media player.  Here are some of the features that the new system offers:

Media server

The MvixBox provides gigabit network speed and large storage capacity, which makes it an ideal system for storing, serving, and transferring media files from one location to another. You can store media files, such as AVI, MPEG, and DIVX movies or MP3 files. From a different room in your home or a meeting room, you can access the content any time needed.

Web Disk Capability

The MvixBox is a Linux-based system, and it comes with what everyone expects Linux servers to include – Apache, MySQL, SQLite, and PHP. To make the server user friendly, a web-disk capability is also provided.  This means the user can drag and drop files between the PC and NAS server. User can launch applications like Windows Explorer, WebDisk Explorer, blog software, RSS reader, Torrent client, and more.  The setup ensures that anyone who knows how to operate a PC in the Windows environment will know how to handle a MvixBox.

Web Server

The web server is perhaps the most interesting feature of all. Since the MvixBox comes with support for Apache, MYSQL, and PHP, you can host web sites directly from the server. There are many different types of sites that you can setup – blogs, wikis, personal home pages, etc. If you don’t want to host web sites, you can even develop scalable intranet solutions using the database support.  This capability makes it one of the most affordable web server solution that the market has to offer for small businesses and home users.

DDNS Server

In order for a web server to recognize Internet domain names, there needs to be a DNS server (or in this case DDNS so that dynamic IPs can be supported). The domain name is mapped to the server IP address, and the DDNS service enables the server to recognize the domain name. Traditional servers supported mostly static IPs. For this reason, you can’t usually operate a web server from home, as most home Internet connections operate on dynamic IPs. Dynamic IPs change all the time, as they are assigned by the ISP. Fortunately, the MvixBox offers free support for dynamic IPs. There is no extra charge for the use of this service.

NAS, Torrent Sharing, and FTP Management

MvixBox offers a simple file sharing feature that provides file encryption when transferring files using HTTP or FTP protocols. You can use the built-in Explorer to transfer files, without having to install additional software.
The system boasts simple and secure administration.

As this is an NAS server, one would expect it to come with simple backup features. The MvixBox does come with easy-to-use data storage scheduling and synchronization. The software is included with the system.

For all the above features, an enthusiast would expect the price tag to be hefty. However, this is not true. The MvixBox retails for around $249.00.  Each unit includes two built-in hard drive bays that are capable of holding up a 1.5 terabyte (TB) hard drive. The hard drives are not included. Therefore, you can buy any size that best meets your needs.  Even with the most expensive hard drive bundled, the entire system still costs just about $600.