Network storage device is fantabulous

SHOULD YOU HAVE a home network and get fed up having to ensure a specific PC is turned on in order for other PCs to access documents and files, network attached storage (NAS), is the way to go.

Hooked up directly to your router, a NAS can be accessed by any PC on your network at any time. The Storcenter from Iomega has a further trick up its sleeve in that it's UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) compatible, which means it's able to communicate with other UPnP devices in your network.

In our test environment, we hooked up a Pinnacle Showcenter 200 and, sure enough, the Storcenter was able to supply the Showcenter with video, audio and images without having to run Pinnacle's streaming software on a PC.

Sadly, the Showcenter has its own problems when it comes to wireless streaming, but that's another matter.

The Storcenter relies on an Ethernet connection instead of wireless, which makes sense since transferring large files over a standard wireless network running at around 15-20Mbits/sec can take a while.

This means that unless you have an extra long Ethernet cable, you'll need to situate it near your router. We tried adding a wireless bridge and, although it worked, the speed drop was enough to prevent the video streaming.

If there's one area where the Storcenter falls down it's the noisy fan. Most of the time it runs without the fan switched on, but when it activates it makes a right racket.

The Storcenter is a neat little device and is reasonably priced, but the noisy fan is an irritation. ?

L'INQ
PCW