Iomega iConnect Wireless Data Station

So you have tons USB storage lying around, and you wish that you could just put it in some out-of-the-way spot and access it across your home network. For a very reasonable $100, the Iomega iConnect Wireless Data Station will let you do that and more--with up to four drives.


The iConnect supports wireless connectivity, but since it's disabled by default you must initially connect via the gigabit ethernet port to enable it. You may connect to the unit and configure it via IP address and a browser, or by installing client software that will discover the box for you. Either way, you wind up at the same visually appealing and easy-to-navigate HTML configuration pages.

I used Windows 7 and Media Player 11 to test the UPnP server, which worked perfectly. Streaming across my admittedly very fast gigabit network was perfect, even with 1080p video. The unit also automatically transferred files from my digital camera when I attached it. (This behavior is optional and configurable under the Media Services tab.)

Blade Server Review: HP BladeSystem c7000

One look at the HP BladeSystem c7000 blade chassis and you understand why HP sells a lot of blades. The unit is aesthetically pleasing, extremely solid, and well appointed, with an LCD panel for chassis monitoring and control, eight half-width I/O slots in the back, six 2,400-watt power supplies, and 10 fans. As with the Dell, all of this is tightly power controlled, as the chassis can dynamically turn power supplies on and off to best meet the electrical load, while reducing energy consumption during lighter loads.

The c7000 also leverages HP's Virtual Connect architecture, which represents a 10G interface as four independent Ethernet interfaces to the blade. These virtual interfaces can be tuned within the Virtual Connect module for specific tasks, such as allocating more bandwidth and priority to iSCSI traffic rather than normal traffic. The configuration of Virtual Connect is somewhat arcane, dispensing with traditional Ethernet switch configurations in favor of GUI port assignments and server profiles. If you want to dive in and quickly configure 802.

Seagate Portable Hard Drive Aims for Flexibility

The FreeAgent GoFlex Pro is one model in Seagate's refresh of its portable hard drive line (desktop versions are available, too). The new GoFlex system this drive is a part of encompasses drives of varying colors and capacities ($100 for 320GB in silver or black; $130 for 500GB in silver, black, red, or blue; $170 for 750GB in silver or black; and $190.


Another potential issue, though, lies with the module concept itself. The drive has not one, but two connections to pass through (the bridge module's connector, and then the connection from the bridge module to your PC). I found on the shipping unit I tried that the connector module could come unseated more easily than I'd expect--a risk when a drive might be sitting on an airplane tray table or the side of a couch.


In our tests, we tried the 500GB drive using both the USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 modules. Over USB 2.0, the drive took 145 seconds to read a 3.68GB folder of files (same as the previous FreeAgent Go), 134 seconds to read a large 3.68GB file (1 second less than its predecessor), and 155 seconds to write that large file (the same as before).