In Mac OS X 10.5 the drive appears automatically in Finder's sidebar, courtesy of Apple's Bonjour zero-configuration technology, from where you can mount the pre-configured Downloads and Public folders with a double-click. Nicely for Mac users, the drive support the Apple Filing Protocol (AFP) as well as the more Windows-friendly and cross-platform CIFS/SMB.
Shiny
Connect to the box using a Windows XP or Vista machine, and you'll see a pair of entries among the list of network devices: one that takes you to the admin console, and another that connects through to the management console for the My Book's built-in Twonky UPnP media server for feeding Xbox 360s, phones and the like. There's an on-board iTunes-oriented music server too.
The CD doesn't come with a UPnP client for the Mac, so you're left in the odd situation where, out of the box, the My Book's shares can be immediately accessed by a Mac but not a PC, but the admin consoles can be accessed immediately by a PC and not a Mac. To access the shared folders from a Windows machine, you need to know either the IP address or use tool WD bundles with the My Book to sniff out the shares and map them to drive letters for you.
But there's no bundled Mac UPnP client, so you can't easily get through to either the Twonky or My Book admin tools without knowing the IP address first.
WD also bundles automatic back-up tools for both Windows and Mac OS X - the My Book isn't compatible with the latter OS' own auto-backup system, Time Machine. You can install the software on five machines.
Freshly purchased, then, the My Book World Edition arguably meets WD's goal of being an easy-as-pie network storage resource. Anyone can plug it in by looking at the picture on the box. Installing the software on the CD completes the process and, once done, you're ready to share files and back up multiple machines.
Gigabit Ethernet and USB 2.0 round the back
Well, almost. Mac OS X's network sniffer-outer is resilient to changes of IP address, but the shortcuts the WD Windows software puts in place rely on the initial IP address. Turn the My Book and router off overnight, and when they start up next time, the storage could, quite easily, have a different IP address, forcing Windows users to run WD Windows Discovery all over again.
COMMENTS
Looks nice on a desk - but better on a bookshelf
Yes any dvice without wires looks nice on a desktop..
Im a QNAPer and wont be converted.
WD's perf figures
Tom's hardware seem to have missed a trick in not conducting their own full wired Ethernet perf tests, but the (WD supplied) file transfer and IOzone perf charts look pretty good:
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/westerndigital-mybook-worldedition,review-1200-8.html
Re: Significant Improvements Made
Scott, if you're going post this exact same sales blurb in several hardware review sites then please try and tailor your posts to address the gripes users have had with this particular piece of hardware rather than reiterate the basic sales pitch.
I'm particularly referring to the rate-limited network interface which prevents people from getting the full advertised network speed from the hardware after they've purchased it. This is something that burnt quite a few users after they purchased the previous version of the My Book World.
If this is fixed in the new version then you've got yourself a convert, otherwise this is just the same hardware with a bigger drive and updated software, which is something users can upgrade themselves using the right linux tools and an el cheapo spare drive.
Availability
@Sentry23, search for WDH1NC10000, there's not much out there and the only place I found it in said "Available in about 28 days"
@Scott Rader
Hey Scott, are you a WD guy?
I assume you've kept with ARM chip. What does it clock at?
How much RAM is there?
What kernel are you using?
