Yep, so what next?

No, that’s not NAP with a silent Q. It’s the Network Attached Storage box that I was investimagating awhile back. I forgot to mention that we did end up buying it! It’s a QNAP TS-201 with a Samsung Spinpoint 500Gb hard drive hanging onto all the data. I might put up a formal review at some stage, but so far, here are my experiences with it:

- Setup was dead simple. Turn it on, plug it in, format the drive using the web based interface, and start dumping files onto it! Easy peasy.

- Speed is not too bad. I haven’t done a proper speed test, but my I think it’s running at about 10-12Mb/sec on average, which is fair. Not brain-burningly fast, but quick enough for now.

- The iTunes server works a treat! Dump all your tracks into the QMultimedia folder (I created a subfolder called ‘Music’) and iTunes will find them all via your Shared music library. You do have to turn the iTunes server on first though, using the QNAP web interface.

Haven’t done much apart from that. I’ve set up the Twonkymedia server, but I don’t have a client to use with it! I tried to use Windoze Media Player 11, but apparently the only version of it that can talk to a media server is the Vista version. It’ll have to wait.

Anyhow, so far it’s all good. No problems, setup was a doddle and it’s pretty fast! Gets a thumbs up from me!