8 out of 9 people found this review helpful.
Nice thought; poor performance
Date of Review: Dec 31, 2007
The Bottom Line: Nice concept. Poor performance.
Box says setup in 3 minutes. Knew that was too good to be true. Set this thing up with a Linksys G router. First, it took two hours to make the thing work - and when I did, its performance was substandard. Initially, it would not power up so I had to troubleshoot why the link lights next to the CAT5 wire wouldn't receive a signal from the router. Tried another cable and it didn't change anything so I went back to the cable that came with the box. Inexplicably it started working.
Next the connections seemed to work fine and the CPU recognized a webcam, 2 external HDs, and an HP laser printer. Interestingly, however, in spite of the printer being recognized print jobs would all fail. I flashed the USB hub with the latest firmware and still no success. Finally I called tech support only to get transferred to another tech line which was only operating during business hours (it was a weekend). Since I have a life and this includes a job, this project now requires business hours which impacts my job. Painful. When are businesses going to just do business 24/7? Don't understand this because in India, those call-centers operate around the clock. Thanks for the inconvenience Belkin.
At any rate, not all of the MP3s stored on the external HD were recognized by Windows Media Player 11 after the wireless configuration.
Passing data to the wireless HDs over wireless-G was painfully slow but tolerable. Seemless DIVX play from external HD.
The straw that broke the camel's back was during the second day of usage when all I did was reboot the CPU, only to discover the 2 external 300GB HDs were now not connecting over the network. I opened Belkin's software and clicked the connect button to no avail. Nothing changed with the configuration except a simple computer restart. I tried multiple times to connect to both of the HDs and it never worked. Frustrated, I boxed this piece of * up and will return it tomorrow.
PD: $79.99 at Best Buy.
