Posts from — August 2010

I’ve recently been given the opportunity to review one of Drobo’s latest creations: the Drobo FS. The FS, which stands for file sharing, is a 5-bay NAS that plugs into your local network via gigabit ethernet. In plain english, you plug the Drobo FS into your wireless router and all the computers in your home (or small office) instantly have access to a huge hard drive. From a technical standpoint, there is a lot more to it than that, but the beauty of this device is you don’t need to know what is going on behind the scenes in order to reap the benefits.

I will be conducting a more detailed review which will be posted over at my Boston Tech Gear column, but I wanted to share some initial thoughts after a week with the device. From unboxing to set-up, getting hands-on with the Drobo has been a wonderful experience. Maybe it was the little black pouch it came in, or the fact that within 15 minutes I was able to add 4TB of protected storage to my network – whatever it was, I liked it.

Setup on my Mac was as easy as it gets. Insert the installer disc, click install and restart. As soon as my machine had come back to life I was greeted by the Drobo Dashboard (more on this in the full review) and a public share with full read/write access for all the computers on my home network. That’s it.

Transfer speeds over my gigabit ethernet connection were good, but definitely not as fast as a locally attached firewire/USB hard drive. This is for a few reasons, which I will get into in the full review, but for the vast majority of users, speeds will be more than sufficient. Case and point, I asked a non-techie person in my house to copy some files to the public share and then asked them what they thought about the transfer speed – to which they replied something along the lines of “it takes as long as it normally does.”

Once you start digging into the advanced options, which there are plenty of, you can really start having some fun with the device. One can set up additional users and shares, control the time it takes before the hard drives spin down – even dim the LEDs. This Drobo also gives you the option to set up Time Machine backup shares. Have three Macs in your house all using Time Machine? Not a problem, each one can have its own backup.

So far, I have been very happy with the design, ease of setup, and simplicity of the device. There are some weaknesses, but you will have to read my full review to hear about those. Stay tuned.

The other day I sank into the driver’s seat of my two-door, shoved the key into the ignition, and brought the machine to life. I quickly powered on my head unit – that’s audio enthusiast speak for car stereo – and began toggling through the sources. Like most fossil fuel burning Americans, I had a few options:

FM – Unlikely there will be anything worth listening to here, maybe NPR
HD radio – Sounds great, but it is still terrestrial radio
CDs – What are these again
iPod – Can only listen to the same albums so many times
Sat radio – My personal choice, but awful sound quality and uninspired DJ’s

A sad lot if you ask me. Yes I know, I’m being a tad unreasonable here. But there just has to be a better way – and there is. It’s called the Internet. And the device that makes it possible to connect to this magical network while traveling 75 MPH down the highway? You guessed it, the iPhone.

It is now possible to listen to any one of the 20,000+ Internet radio stations while on the move. Plus- Pandora, AOL Radio, Last FM…They’re all here too! There are even paid services, such as the recently launched MOG, which gives you the ability to stream all the albums in their database for $9.99/month. Also, by using one of the slick Internet radio apps (my app of choice is TuneIn Radio, $1.99) you can do neat tricks like pause live radio and record streams.

But wait, there’s more (that line never gets old). How’s the sound quality, you ask? Well, it blows satellite radio out of the water. A 64K, yes 64K AAC audio stream sounds better than most XM channels. A 128K MP3 stream sounds great. And a 192K stream, well let’s just say you won’t be longing for the days of compact disc.

Hang on now. It gets even better. If your car has A2DP Bluetooth, you won’t even have to connect any wires. Just start your car and within seconds your iPhone will automatically connect – the sound quality over the latest version of stereo Bluetooth is excellent.

Let’s have a little rundown:
Huge selection of Internet radio stations
Access to music services like Pandora and MOG
Sound quality that surpasses XM and FM
Ability to pause/record live radio

Awesome.

So there you have it, liberation from the oppression of traditional in-car audio entertainment…Just be sure to watch your data usage if you’re stuck on a capped plan!