With 1TB drives in the $100 price range, NAS starting around $150 and USB enabled routers running about the same, I was pleasantly surprised to find this unit marked down to $75 from $105.
Even more for the price-point, the MX3600 promises these additional features:
- USB printer server
- FTP server
- UPnP media server
- iTunes server
- MP3 server
- File server
- Bit torrent download
There were no other simmular product which is usually not a good sign but I decided to try it anyway.
What your actually getting with MyXerver is a mini computer. A plastic Mac Mini look alike, the MX3600 houses a 250MHz cpu with 32MB of DDR RAM and 8MB of Flash Memory. The SATA hard drive sizes run from 500GB to 2TB.
Installation of MyXerver is a cakewalk, unfortunately initial setup is not. First be prepared if your a Mac user that the initial setup is geared for Windows users (even though that doesn't work either). The installation disk is Windows only and didn't find the server when I tried the setup disk from a Windows machine. More bad news is that doing the browser based manual setup per their instructions (enter MyXerver in your browser) on any OS machine didn't work as well. Fortunately finding the assigned ip address and using your browser does work. You are presented with a simple landing page to access the server set-up and user accounts.
Generally for me when a product has failed at initial set-up I become very skeptical. It usually means the rest will be garbage too. Fortunately the experience actually got better from that point on. Setup is very easy once you get past the so-so written instructions. I won't go into detail here since you can download the set-up manual from the web site, but essentially you add user accounts, decide if you want to give them their own "virtual partition" and how much space, create directories from your network manager or finder (you can not create directories from web based access) for the iTunes Server, Media Server and MP3 server, tell it if you want guest accounts and FTP access, copy your files and your done.
The package includes a licensed copy of NTI Shadow for both Windows and Mac (thank you) on the hard drive in the public or "disk" folder. The software is easy to setup and easy to use.
Despite my initial set-up disappointment, I really like this product. It functions well as a NAS solution and throws in some great additional features (that actually work) that I haven't seen on any other unit. I'm actually surprised this company and product are not more well known. A few minor tweaks from the company would really amplify product recognition and sales.
Universal Tech MyXerver MX 3600 Network Storage
Pro's
- Price point
- Mini Computer
- Great additional feature set that works
- Design
- Wireless, wired and anywhere web remote access
- Guest accounts
Con's
- Set-up
- Windows only set-up disk
- Instructions
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