Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Techies hankering for a more involved experience can head over to the management console, but it's by no means mandatory. If you do, you'll find the same system used on WD's business-oriented ShareSpace NAS box. There's a Basic mode that provides a pared back set of options for adding user accounts, managing the shared - and new, not-necessarily shared - folders, and engaging the remote access facility - of which, more later.
Deeper-level admin in Advanced Mode
Advanced mode lets you dig a little deeper: corral users into groups; apply storage quotas; disable the media servers and/or the various data-access protocols supported; apply firmware updates; and get notifications of problems. All solid sysadmin stuff, in other words, none of which consumers will need, or geeks, come to think of it.
UPnP/DLNA server included
The management console's login screen also provides access to Copy Manager, which is used to duplicate the drive's contents on a USB-connected back-up drive or another NAS box. Yes, the letters N, A and S are mentioned, so WD hasn't entirely rid itself of the term. Only another WD NAS is supported here - the My Book didn't present the 500GB of Time Capsule CIFS storage on the network, though maybe that's because it's too small to back up the 1TB My Book on.
Alongside Copy Manager and Network Storage Manager (the My Book management console), the login screen also connects you to Downloader, the tool you use to schedule downloads the box will automatically grab for you. It'll only do http and ftp downloads - BitTorrent buffs will have to look elsewhere.
Access UPnP/DLNA from a phone
Downloader has different login details than the other consoles. We can't see why, on a consumer device, they're not all the same. Actually, we can't see why they're not all accessed from one, unified management console. Heck, we're not even sure if all these layers are necessary in a business-class device. If admins don't trust their own passwords why should they trust three?
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.
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