Having my own cloud was easier than I thought
588002
The Transporter is a great product and set-up was as simple as drag-and-drop the files. My only complaint is the load-up time of the files is slow when compared to either Google Drive or Dropbox. I do not mirror my files on my computers; they only reside on the Transporter drive; so this is probably a huge part of the "slowness." That said, you cannot beat the price/GB when compared to either Google or Dropbox. My cable modem network speed is 100 Mbps/20Mbs.
1995640
If you didn't already know, cloud computing's totally the new geek buzz term.  When I first learned it a few months ago, I jokingly told my friends that I'd be dropping that term more in conversation just to sound smarter.

....Even though I only about 80% knew what it meant.

Despite all my reading up about the cloud on various websites and watching multiple explanations on YouTube, it wasn't until a conversation that I recently had with the author, James Beswick, though, where he quoted his book, Getting Productive with Google Apps, that I had my a-ha moment.  He wrote, "The current situation is like having to own a power station to run a toaster".  That quote is so spot on about the cloud, because why have your own power station to run a toaster when you can run it on someone else's more efficient power station?  A power station that's perpetually in R&D and gets constant upgrades at that.  You'll still get your toast either way.  Heck, the toast might be even better on the cloud.  James was kind enough to give me a copy of his book, and lucky for me, it turns out that it was just what I needed to get in sync with the concept of the cloud.  Google style!

James goes into details about most aspects of Google apps in this book, but one thing that he doesn't really explain is cloud computing.  If you plan on reading the book and don't know much about the concept of working on the cloud, then I would highly suggest getting acquainted with that concept because it will help you really grasp the point of this book.

The book is conveniently divided up into chapters by tools such as Gmail, Calender, Docs, Presentations, Spreadsheets, etc, and definitely has the most organized and detailed table of contents ever.  The book itself is also super organized and loaded with diagrams, screenshots and tutorials so that I know exactly what he's writing about.  It's like a mini 200 page textbook.

I'm not exactly the most tech-savvy person and thought that I would have to look up a lot of terms in the book on Wikipedia, but that wasn't the case at all.  I actually found it to be a pretty easy and straight forward read.  It's almost as if the book was written for n00b5 like me!  I'm mostly a social media fiend (meaning that most of my e-content is already on the net) and am otherwise a casual user of the internet (meaning that I'm no web entreupreneur or anything... at least not yet! :P), so some of the tools introduced in this book wouldn't be of much use to me, though it was neat learning about them and good to know that they're there.  There were actually quite a few useful tools that I'll be implementing into my own net life, though, that will make my life and my web experience run smoother.

Suffice to say, if you want to dive head first into the world of cloud computing, definitely pick up this book and get your start through Google apps (though I'm sure that most people are already working on the cloud in one way or another without knowing it).  Hint: this book is even more useful if you're a web entreupreneur because learning to use these apps will definitely help you reduce costs and more importantly, improve the infrastructure of your business.
1645450
I originally bought this tent because my wife of 14 years finally kicked me out of our house. At first I must admit I was really upset about not being able to sleep in my own bed or under my own roof. As I began setting up this tent underneath the highway overpass near our house, I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to put together, despite the fact that I was physically and emotionally devastated. It advertises it can sleep 4 people, but it was really only big enough to house myself, my suitcase, and our family dog Keith. I love this tent so much I've decided to stop looking for an apartment altogether and to make this tent my permanent residence. I would recommend this tent as highly as I would recommend getting a pre-nup before signing your life away.
239555
I was a bit nervous about buying an NAS for backup purposes, but the ZyXEL Personal Cloud Storage Server easily found its place in my computing arsenal. The ability to hot-swap disks in and out is a godsend if a disk goes bad -- no need to bring the whole thing down just to swap it out -- and the multiple RAID configurations available gives plenty of options. The built-in software, however, is rather atrocious, and should be avoided at all costs; my experience with it ranges from irritated to giving up on it entirely, except to keep an eye on system health and how full the drives are.

Haven't used the wireless cloud part of the software package, and don't plan to, except possibly just to test it out. This just strikes me as a major security risk (if someone hacks your cellphone/device, they'll have access to your computer's backups and POSSIBLY YOUR COMPUTER ITSELF THROUGH IT), and I wouldn't use it at all. It's just easier and safer to use something like Dropbox to save stuff to while on-the-go, then have it side-loaded onto the NAS once you get home. I'd rather not be walking around with a direct link to my computer's backup drive(s) sitting in my pocket.

One thing to note: on Windows, one can bypass the hardwired software and access the NAS directly simply by using the server name when entering an address in Windows Explorer or other programs. As well, temporarily mapping a network location as a system drive can help if a program (say  for example, a backup program) has trouble finding your NAS. I've found these access methods to be much easier to deal with than trying to fiddle with the software, which
4069808
This past holiday season, my dad bought my mom a laptop. In order for her to get online, we needed a wireless access point, a router. I'm known as the family computer geek and know a little of everything about computers and networking... enough to be "dangerous" you could say. haha. But when it came time to set this router up, I was a little nervous. Mom and dad subscribe and use Vontage, a VOIP phone service. Vontage includes a router with their service so it can split their broadband signal to the phone and the desktop computer. I wasn't sure what problems may arise by hooking the new Linksys router up to that existing setup. After thoroughly reading the directions and following step by step, I discovered it wasn't a big deal after all. The unmentioned trick to it was choosing where to put this new router, before or after the vontage. This was never mentioned in the directions, so I had to flip a coin and take the most obvious solution to me. Since Vontage was already up and working, I didn't want to chance screwing that up by placing this Router inline before it. So I hook up this Linksys router AFTER the Vontage router. I used the line that use to go from the Vontage router into my dad's desktop computer into this new Linksys router. Then completely followed all the given simple step by step directions from the CD to connected his desktop to an available port on the new Linksys router. After he was set up and "hardwired" to the router, it was time to connect up my mom's laptop "wirelessly". In the provided software, on my dad's desktop, I selected "add a new connection" .. or it was something like that, and simply followed the directions. Couldn't be any easier! It took about an hour, but that was mostly from me be overly cautious and re-reading everything before I move to the next stop. I didn't want to take a chance and overlook a step and mess up the entire process. The trick to getting stuff hooked up and working is to take your time and don't rush. It is very easy to over look the simplest thing and screw it all up by doing so. I do highly recommend this product and as soon as I get my own laptop, I'll get my own. I've use Linksys routers on my own network, we use them at work, and Linksys continues to be my first choice in network solutions.
2931151
I received this as a Christmas gift this year.  I installed the overhead storage system by myself in about an hour.  It was easy to install and a very useful storage system.  I have my ice chests stored overhead now instead of in the way.  I plan on purchasing 3 additional units to complete my garage.
1818167
Personally like this better than a single use license where you get screwed if you change computers or if reset the computer and lose the key. Haven't had any problems yet. Haven't been able to use all the new cloud features but I like the ability to do so if need be.
1700289
I saw this product on the morning News and decided to try it since it was reasonably priced.  I spend all day on a computer at work so when I get home the last thing I want to do is mess around with configurations and the WiFi. This was super easy to install! Didnt  frustrate me at all and It was really eye opening just how much time my kids spent online and where they spent it.  Needless to say there were a lot of changes in my House once I got this. My kids spent monthes trying to figure out how to go around it and stay on the WiFi which they cant.  So glad I bought it.
4784928
For years I have wished to replace Microsoft on my home PC with Linux.  It seems every new version of Microsoft software required more and more memory and greater CPU horsepower.  I had used Linux at work and knew it was generally faster.  The problem was always a bad experience in the past where I attempted to install Red Hat Linux on my home machine and had problems setting up my computer to be useful again.  In the end, I gave up on Linux and went crawling back to Microsoft again.  I did go ahead and replace MS Office with OpenOffice.org and was very pleased with that product.  This is not a reflection on Red Hat at all, I know many have had success with it and I am glad.  And, I am sure it has improved since those many years ago.  But, the initial problems made me afraid to try again.

Finally, I kept hearing about Ubuntu of late and decided it might be time to try and swim in the deep end again.  I downloaded the CD image and requested this CD through amazon just in case I ran into problems with the download or CD imaging.  The imaging had no issues so I went ahead and gave it a try.  At first I had hoped to try a dual partition rather than jumping in with both feet but the partitioning process had errors and it only gave permission to continue with Ubuntu as a full partition or not at all.  I did not want to make that leap so I tried booting from the CD just to see how my PC would do with Ubuntu.  After trying all my usual tasks in Ubuntu (surfing the net, working on some OpenOffice documents, etc) I was very pleased and decided to go ahead with the full partitioning after backing up some important data files.  I would have preferred the dual-boot option at least for a time but Ubuntu is easy enough to learn and OpenOffice can convert MS documents so well that I realized there really was no need for a dual-boot configuration.

After the automated installation, which was as easy or easier than any Windows install I have done in the past, I plunged right into personalizing the preferences.  I had some difficulty in that the automatic install did not recognize my display monitor or video card and so it was stuck in low-resolution; but after a quick glance at the online support forums I found a lot of help figuring this issue out and had that resolved.  All this took several hours altogether but probably did not amount to much more time than a Windows install would have taken in reality.  I was not locked to my desk for much of that time and only came back to check progress from time to time.  The time spent looking for answers in the forums was the main delay but the wait for answers was brief.  The Ubuntu community is very active and very helpful.

Several days have passed using Ubuntu and I am very pleased I switched.  I was able also to set up accounts for all the kids so each can have their own environment to work in.  I also set up a guest account for when the kids have friends over who want to use the computer.  OpenOffice and Firefox are essentially the same between Ubuntu and Microsoft versions so the learning curve is very shallow.  The ease of use and installation are much better than Linux versions of the past making Ubuntu a solid contender for the PC market.  The minor glitches I encountered are a very small price to pay for free software that performs better than the costly memory-hogging alternative.
3578259
This replaced 4 externals and made my life so much easier.  One plug instead of four. One network cable instead of four. Cannot be knocked over by accident like the external drives I had that the cats thought were fun to knock over. It is solidly built from an aluminum like material with no sharp edges to scrape shelves or cut yourself on. Drives were easily installed. Set up was easy if you are already familiar with setting up network drives. Otherwise, it can be confusing because instructions are not written well.

There are a couple of bugs I would like to see fixed like the WORKGROUP never being changed from WORKGROUP no matter the settings but I am very happy with it

Solid, if utilitarian, upnp/dnla media server. Easy to use internet access via 'cloud service, your files are kept on your machine.. you use the cloud service to access your machine from anywhere. I was surprised to see I did not need to make special adjustments to my router to get this to work but I already set network servers to a fixed internal ip.
1763573
This was my first Network Accessible Storage device that I had ever laid hands on, but it was very easy to figure out.

Right out of the box, the quick start guide was succinct in telling me how to install the drives and navigate to the web interface. The basic setup took about an hour, then the RAID verification took about 10 for 2 x 2 TB WD Red drives. Creating a share was a snap, though you might have to look a little harder to create users for that share (or to enable the guest account). It has a HTTP interface, but you may need to hunt down the IP manually if the name doesn't resolve correctly, as may occur in some unusual network layouts.

Overall this device performed very well for setting up a small business file server, as an alternative to a full workstation hosting key data. It's very responsive to client requests.
3783906
I found that the process was very simple and user friendly. I did need to free up some space on the HDD and I was happily surprised to see that that program stayed running while I was able to free up space through Add/Remove Programs. The video tutorial was more useful than not and seemed to keep me on track during the installation. Sometimes these videos are more distracting but I did not feel that with this video. I have upgraded to Win7 without the aid of Parallels and I found the Parallels process to be much easier.
4095545
Based on some of the reviews here and on the WD site, I was really concerned about this. But so far, I am quite impressed with this 4TB My Cloud. Setup was about as easy as it gets, and I had this up and running on my network in about 15 minutes. Some concerns have noted issues with speed. However, my experience appears to be much better than what others have found. Using Lan Speed Test, I am getting about 45 MB/sec write and 75 MB/sec read (this is megabytes, not megabits). Using Windows 7 Ultimate's File Explorer to copy a 2 gigabyte file, I am getting about 35 MB/sec write and about 65 MB/sec read times, which is really not too shabby. I will note that my desktop computer is a bit older (Q6600 Core 2 Quad processor with 8 MB ram; file copied from my secondary HDD, not my primary SSD). I have a gigabit LAN and the computer and My Cloud were both connected to the same gigabit switch (a cheap and reliable TrendNet TEG-S80G), and despite other network traffic, these are still reasonable numbers. I think many of the reported issues are likely due to configuration issues, or unreasonable expectations for a $40 NAS (minus the included WD Red drive).

I had toyed with getting a Synology DS214+, but populated with 2 4TB Red drives would have cost nearly $750 (with CA tax). Instead, I figured I would try this one, and if worse came to worse, I still had a 4TB WD Red drive inside (currently about $175 on Amazon). So, I would be out about $40 for trying this out if I didn't like the My Cloud, since I could always salvage that 4TB drive for a more powerful NAS setup. But, so far, so good. Plus, with the addition of the Safepoint backups and a spare 4TB USB 3.0 drive that I have, I have a way to protect my data by having the My Cloud perform nightly Safepoint backups on its data. I'll be using this for daily backups of all of our computers (a Windows 7 based desktop, a Windows 8 based laptop and a Mac OS X based laptop, Android phones and an iPad), and as a DNLS server for our photos and videos. I also was able to open up a port for this drive and use DynDNS to avoid the use of WD's relay server. This way, I'm not dependent on WD to access my My Cloud remotely (which is something I highly recommend, as many of the complaints about the My Cloud line are due to recent problems with WD's relay server).

Overall, I think this is a reasonable option for a home backup solution. It is not the speediest, but it is also not the spendiest approach. Time will tell if this ends up being the best solution for my needs, but so far, I am happy.  I ordered this through Amazon Prime and received the drive the next day. I stress that this is about a $40 risk, since you can salvage the 4 TB Red drive if you decide to go with another NAS solution.

Note: I've now had this unit online for about two weeks and overall the unit runs fine. I have added a 4TB My Book USB 3.0 drive for Safepoint backups (which keeps an automatic backup of all the files stored on the My Cloud). Overall, access is quick. I have two niggling points that have dropped my rating from 5 to 4 stars however. First, while you can access the shares remotely using WD2GO.com, you cannot administer the NAS remotely (without some unsupported tweaking). I'm not sure if this is just for the 1 drive My Cloud, or the same for all of the My Cloud family. This is odd because other SOHO NAS devices will allow this. Second, I'm having serious trouble getting the My Cloud to connect via port forwarding instead of using the WD relay server. The second issue is not huge, but I would think that WD could do a better job in facilitating port forwarding and other LAN configuration settings easier to do, especially on a consumer NAS device. If you need remote access via port forwarding and remote administration, it would probably be better to look at a more expensive NAS device that can support these (e.g. Synology).
1636679
Been using this for a few months now. I have had no problems with the unit other than getting the my cloud remote working but that was not the device fault was a network problem I had to tweak in my dd-wrt router. Having all my media on this instead of having to leave a power hungry computer on at all times is great. Now all my devices can play music or videos. With out taking up space on them.

Away from home no problem. Get the my cloud app for you ios or android and you can acess you media while away.

One note make shore you update the firmware as soon as you hook it up since good chance it will be out of date and there are fixes in it.
485607
I've always wanted to make my own ice cream at home, but didn't know whether it would be a regular thing or just a novelty that would wear off, so I started off with a cheap model that required rock salt and ice. It made decent enough ice cream, but was a pain to use, because it required always having 2 bags of ice handy and rock salt, which isn't always easy to find, depending on time of year. Then I decided to give another type of machine a try, the kind with a double chamber that needs to be frozen. It was a little easier to use, because it didn't require a lot of cleanup or having ice and rock salt handy, but still required prep time, as the bucket needed to be pre-frozen, and the ice cream didn't come out as creamy, because the temperature wasn't cold enough. The frozen liquid within the chamber would start melting before the ice cream was done.

At that point, I knew that ice cream making would be a regular activity in my house, and I decided to upgrade to the real thing (without spending a fortune of course). I have not regretted my decision. This machine is super easy to use, and ready in an instant. I was worried that the capacity might be a little too low, but it's actually just right. There's really no need to make bigger batches at a time, unless you're planning to serve ice cream to a large group of people. Even then, you can make batch after batch without any wait time in between. The ice cream comes out super creamy and the consistency of hard ice cream, without the need for further freezing.

For any Nutella lovers out there, one of my all time favorites is Nutella ice cream, It is also the easiest ice cream you will ever make, only two ingredients: equal parts Nutella and evaporated milk. Mix well and toss in he ice cream maker. It is to die for! And even better when served in a home made waffle cone.
924356
I had the WD external cloud drive and it seemed a bit more complicated to set up and get quick access from my other computers.  This one lets you set up quickly and is great for sharing documents and pictures on all pc's at home.  Once a year I back it up on a jump drive and keep the back up at a separate location from my home just in case we ever get robbed or the house goes down in flames  :(
2767890
i like having my own instead of renting from comcast will eventually pay for itself. was very simple to have comcast enable everything also.